The time which passed while the ground cooled and the steam mist cleared was as long to me as those dragging hours when I had been pent in the sanctuary of Tanth. Every impulse pushed me to the rent, to go to claim aid from my own kind. For by one of the most ancient laws of the star lanes any wayfarer marooned as I had been could claim passage on the first ship finding him and be taken off without question.

At last, though the heat was still that of the Arzorian dry lands in midsummer, I pulled myself through the rent and dropped to the charred ground, favoring my bruised leg as best I could. There was a huddled form some distance away, one of the sniffers who had been caught in the backwash of rocket fire. I limped in the opposite direction.

The sound and the heat had made me believe the newcomers had finned down very close to the wreck, but that was not so. However, the rocket wash had cleared that ancient ship of the growth on it. It was not, I saw now, as large as the space derelict, but more the general bulk of a Free Trader. Perhaps it had been left upright on its fins, just as the recently arrived ship was standing a goodly distance away, and the passing of time or some disaster had thrown it over.

I came slowly around to the erose, pitted fins, to look across a firebared space at the new ship. It was about the size of the Vestris. But no Free Trader’s insignia was etched on its side. Nor did it have the blaze of Survey, nor of the Patrol. Yet why would any private vessel land on such a planet as this? There are wealthy Veeps, with a taste for hunting, who crack laws by searching out uncharted worlds where they may indulge their bloodthirsty tastes without falling afoul of the Patrol. If such a hunter had landed here before, that would explain the hostility of the sniffers. But- I drew back into the fin shadow - it would also mean trouble for me. Witnesses to illegal actions are accident prone, and there would be none to ask questions about me.

Only - a Veep’s star yacht would have a set of code numbers. There was only one type of ship which would deliberately remain anonymous. I had never seen one, but there were tales in plenty heard in ports. And Vondar’s connections had reason to gossip about such matters. The Thieves’ Guild maintained ships. Some, under the cover of false papers, made legitimate trading voyages, with only now and then a reason to touch the other side of the law. I suspected the Vestris might have been such a ship. But there were other swift cruisers, often fitted with equipment which was experimental, stolen, or bought up before it was generally known.

These were raiders. They did not prey as pirates in space, because that was a very chancy business, to be tried only if a cargo was of such value that one dared a costly gamble. Instead, they looted on planets. Waystar was their legendary base, a satellite or small planet, fortified, hidden, save from those who satisfied its rulers they had no connection with the Patrol or any other law. There had been so many stories, wild tales of Waystar and the shark fleet which operated out of it, that one did not believe in them much. Yet Eet had insisted that I had been unwittingly bound for that place before he had taken steps to separate me from the Vestris.

A raiding ship would carry no markings, or else ones which could be changed at will. But a Guild raider here? It was entirely past the bounds of credibility that it was seeking me. My back trail was now so tangled they could not believe me alive, let alone that chance would land me here.

Therefore they had some other mission. And the last thing I must do - until I was sure of that ship - was to contact its crew or passengers. Though it was closed now, I could not be sure that I had not already been sighted on some visa screen. I began to edge back, keeping under the curving side of the wreck, retreating as eagerly as I had earlier advanced.

There was a sharp clang and the hatch opened, the landing ramp protruding like a tongue out over the smoking ground, hunting anchorage on the untouched land. It angled away from the wreck, so those using it could not clearly see it or me- I hoped.

I retreated further; I longed to dart back, away now from the wreckage, which could only draw curious explorers. There was a brush screen still standing, but I could not be sure that some of the sniffers were not lurking there.

The men who came out on the ramp had no protective suiting, proving that they were aware of the nature of this world, ready to be about their purpose here. They wore side arms, and even from this distance, I saw the short barrels of the lasers, not the long ones of the more ordinary stunners. So they were prepared to kill.

Though they wore the conventional planetside dress of any crewmen, coveralls and boots, those had no insignia on breast or collar. Nor was there any choice of color to suggest a uniform. The first two were human or humanoid, but behind them came a shorter figure with four upper limbs which hung at his sides in a way to suggest an unusual flaccidity. His head, which was round, lacked hair and appeared to rest directly on his shoulders, with no support of neck. Where a human skull would show ears, he wore tall feathery appendages which moved constantly back and forth, as Eet’s head had moved when he tested for signs of life around him. And of the three I saw, I feared him the most. For as Eet had said, who knows what extra talents an X-Tee might possess. And any among a human crew would be there for no other reason than that he had attributes they found highly useful.

To re-enter the wreck was to be trapped. I must make up my mind to leave the dubious protection of its overhang and try to reach the bush or the river. And it seemed to me that the river offered the lesser menace.

For as long as I could I watched the three from the ship. They reached the end of the ramp, fanned out. The two humans on either side flanked the X-Tee in the middle. His feathery appendages were no longer whirling about; instead they now pointed their tips straight before him, and I could see more of his face. His features were not as far removed from the human norm as were the sniffers’. He had a short nose, two eyes, and if they were set far to the sides of his head and lacked brows, and if his mouth was wider than seemed symmetrical, he was still not too unlike his crewmates.

Suddenly he halted and in lightning draws two of his upper arms caught at the double set of weapons he wore. The brilliant splash of laser fire pencil-beamed from their tips, blackening the brush. His attack was followed by a scream and a thrashing, which marked the passing of either a sniffer or something of similar bulk. The two humans went into a half crouch, their weapons out and ready. But they had not fired, and it would seem they depended upon the X-Tee for leadership in attack.

I crawled back. Now the ship was between me and those killers. When I came to the river, I saw that blocks had been uprooted from the ruined wall and tumbled by the force of the water. At one time some structure on the other side of the stream had fallen, its masonry joining to the walls on this side to provide a dam. Perhaps that had caused, until the water had broken through again, the flooding of the country.

Now there was a crazy jumble of rocks and stones washed and ringed by the water, forming a broken bridge across that ribbon of river. On the other side was the cliff, some distance away, and as Eet had reported, that was holed with dark openings. Between the water and its face were the remains of buildings.

On this side of the ship the clinging vegetation had not been burned away so thoroughly. Perhaps the river spray gave more moisture, for in some places it grew into long trailing vines.

“Eet?” I tried that call, the life here leading me to hope that he might have survived after all. Or had he fallen to a club? I looked along the rocks, down to the water-washed stones, half expecting to see there a small body lying twisted and broken.

“Eet-?”

The answer I hoped against hope to hear did not come. But what did was an awareness of another kind, a strange groping which could not touch minds as Eet did, but which noted my call. Not that it could trace it back to its source. Only it was alerted.

The X-Tee - could he have “heard” me somehow? My folly struck home as I teetered on the edge of a block, looking down for a possible bridge over the river. To attempt the drop with my dragging leg was more than I dared. I could be caught out there, helpless, vulnerable to any laser beam.

And so I betrayed myself. For as I hesitated I heard from behind:

“Hold it - right there!”

Basic, spoken with a human intonation. I turned slowly, holding on to a block for support, to face one of the humans from the ship. He was like any other crewman, save that in his hand was a laser pointing directly at me.

I knew then that I had thrown away one small advantage. Had I come out to greet the ship’s people in wild joy, as they would expect from one marooned, made up a plausible story, they might not have been suspicious. Of course, it would have been dangerous for me if they wanted to cover up their presence on this world. But I would have gained time. Now my own actions made me suspect. I still had a small trick I could play - I could accentuate my lameness, allow my captors to believe that I was far more handicapped than I really was.

So I waited for the other to approach, making a display of holding to my support as if to loose it for a moment would allow me to collapse. And I hoped my general disreputable appearance would add to my claim of injury. Perhaps I could even build upon those patches of new skin so apparent on my body, using a story of being set adrift in an LB when plague was feared. It would not be the first time such an incident had happened.

My captor did not come too close, though he could see both of my hands in plain sight on the stone and that I had no weapons. And his laser never wavered from its sighting on my chest.

“Who are you?” he demanded in Basic.

In those few moments I had determined on the role which might save me. I cowered away from him and shrieked, in the wildest and least sane voice I could counterfeit.

“No-no! Do not kill me! I am well, I tell you! The fever is gone - I am well-“

He halted and I thought I saw his eyes narrow as he studied my face intently. I trusted those pink patches were very visible.

“Where did you come from?” Was there a subtle alteration in his tone? Could I make him believe that I was a deportee from a plague ship, and that I expected to be burned down on sight for no other reason than that I had been cast adrift?

“A ship- Do not kill me! I tell you I am clean now - the fever is gone! Let me go - I will not come near you - your ship - just let me go!”

“Stand where you are!” His order was sharp. Now he cupped his free hand before his mouth and spoke into a com mike. The words he used were not Basic and I could not understand, save that he must be reporting to a superior. This was a dangerous game I played; a hair’s difference could mean life or death.

“You-“ He motioned with the laser. “Walk ahead-“

“No- I will go - I will not infect-“

“Walk!” A beam, cut to a finger’s breadth in diameter, clipped the stone not far from my left hand. Its heat was searing. I cried out as he expected me to do.

I saw him grin. “Touched you? Want another - closer this time? I said - walk! The Captain’s interested in you.

Walk I did, making a clumsy business of pulling myself along as if my bruised leg were hardly more than a dead weight.

“Got hurt?” my captor asked, viewing my very slow progress with impatience.

“There are natives- with clubs- they hunted me-‘ I mumbled.

“So? They have a liking for meat, and you would be that, as far as they are concerned. Not good - meeting with them.” He might have been remembering some earlier experience of his own.

I lurched along as slowly as I could, magnifying my limp. Once more I rounded the end of the wreck and now both the other human and the X-Tee came toward us. The X-Tee had holstered his lasers, but both those feather fronds inclined in my direction.

Whether my communication with Eet had sharpened any esper talent I might have had, though I was sure I was not talented at all, I could not tell. But I was aware of an impact from the alien which was not physical, but mental. Only, if he was trying to batter his way into my mind, he was not successful. There was no smooth meeting as I had known with Eet. And I hoped I could completely bar his probe. It was necessary that I remain what I seemed to be-

“So you flushed him,” the other human observed. “What was he trying to do - scramble?”

“Not with that leg. And be may have more wrong with him - take a good look at that face.”

So bidden, he did, with a searching stare. And his expression suggested be was not in favor of what be saw. I wondered just how bad my sloughing skin and the shiny new patching looked. It was no longer so noticeable on my hands or so I thought. But then I was used to seeing it and any fading from those violent purple splotches was an improvement as far as I was concerned.

“Perhaps you had better keep him well away,” was the newcomer’s verdict. “Tell the Captain about him.”

“Captain’s waiting - up there. March, you!”

There was someone standing on the ramp. A jerk of the laser sent me on. I stumbled along, hoping I was indeed a miserable object for anyone’s eyes to rest upon.

TWELVE

We came to the foot of the ramp and there they bid me stand, ringing me in, their weapons ready. The man awaiting us came several paces farther down to study me in slow appraisal.

He was from one of the old worlds, those first colonized. Generations living under alien conditions had given him differences of physique which were noticeable at more than the first glance. His body, under the coverall with the Captain’s shooting star on its standing collar, was thin and lank, his skin dark even beneath the space tan; but his eyes and hair were even more indicative of mutation from the parent stock. The hair, of necessity worn very short to accommodate a helmet, was more blue than gray, thick, and it grew in straight, short spikes. His eyes were a brilliant blue-green, larger than ordinary, and with double eyelids, one almost transparent against the ball, the other, heavier, fitting over it. He visibly lifted both to view me, but I think that the sunlight bothered him, as he quickly dropped the inner ones.

But - I knew him! Not by name, but from the past. Whether the recognition would be mutual, I did not know. I hoped not. This man had visited my father’s shop, had been one of those escorted into the inner room, exiting through the private door. He had not worn a Captain’s tunic then, nor aught to suggest he was a ship’s officer. In fact his hair had then been long enough to brush the outsized, wing-padded shoulders of his foppish tunic - the elegance of an inner-planet dandy.

That he was of the Guild I did not now doubt. But would he know me for Jern’s son? And if I were recognized, could such a relationship be useful to me?

I was not to be left long in doubt on either point. He advanced another step and then laughed, raised his hand to his mouth, and made a vee with his two fingers, through which he spat deliberately right and left.

“By the Lips and Limbs of Sorelle Herself! After this day will I burn farn leaves to Her in any shrine I see! That which was lost is found. And see, boys, that it be not lost again. Murdoc Jern - how did you get here? I will believe any tale you spin me after this.”

The three guarding me stirred and moved in, making very sure that I was not going to disappear - or even have a chance to attempt escape. I had only my role of late plague victim left. Aside from that, I would use as much of the truth as could be checked if later they set a scanner on me.

I allowed my mouth to hang open a little, and wavered as if I kept my feet only through an exhausting effort.

“Do- do not kill me! The fever- it is gone - I am whole now-“

“Fever?”

“Look at him, Captain,” my captor urged. “He is two colors - best take care-“

“You, Jern, hold your head up! Let us see-“

I swayed back and forth. They were still afraid of coming too close. The terror of plague deflated the toughest starman when he faced it.

“I am- am clean-“ I repeated. “They put me off in an LB - but now I am well - I swear it.”

The Captain palmed his com and spoke into it with a snap in that tongue that was not Basic. We waited in silence until a second man came running lightly out on the ramp. He held before him a small box, from which extended a length of slender cable, ending in a disc not unlike a hand com. I knew it for a portable diagnostic. The ship was apparently very well equipped.

Advancing within touching distance of me, the medico swung his search disc in careful examination, his eyes ever on the indicators of the box.

“Well?” It was plain the Captain found this interruption irritating.

“He is clean, by what we can judge. There is always the possibility though-“

“To what point?” pressed his commander.

“The hundreth perhaps. Who can say definitely?” The medico expressed the caution normal to his calling.

“We shall settle for that.” The Captain waved him back. “So,” he said to me, “it seems you are right. Your fever or whatever it was is, gone and you are no plague risk. But you were on board ship when it struck?”

“On a Free Trader- out of Tanth-“ I raised my hands to my head, rubbed them across my forehead as if I were dazed or in pain. “I-it is hard to remember. I was on Tanth - I had to escape. There was trouble. So I paid gems and Ostrend gave me passage. There was another world - the natives were all gone. And after that I was sick. They said it was plague - put me out in the LB. It made landing here - but there were natives - they hunted me-“

“To this place?” The Captain was smiling. “But how fortunate for you. The hunt ended in the one spot you might meet an off-world ship.”

“There was a wall- I followed it- and the wood people - they seemed afraid. I got in a wrecked ship, they did not come after me-“

“What fortune favored you, Jern, and us too! We might have met you elsewhere, but time is saved because we meet here. You see, you have been a focus of interest to others. We have long wanted to meet you “

“I-I do not understand-“

“What is the matter with him?” The Captain. rounded on the medico. “He is not rated as stupid in our reports.”

The medico shrugged “Who knows what happens to a man when a plague strikes? He is clean of infection as far as I can tell, but I cannot vouch for any changes a strange virus may have caused in mind or body.”

“We shall turn him over to you.” The Captain had lost his smile. “Suppose you make all the tests you need, and then let us know whether we have an imbecile or a source of reliable information.”

“Take him on board?” The medico hesitated.

“Where else? I thought you said he was clean-“

“There is always the chance it is something new.”

I felt rather than saw the Captain’s indecision. But that did not last long.

“What equipment will you need? Can it be brought out of the ship?” he asked.

“Most of it - yes. Where will you put him?”

“In the workings, where else? Segal, Onund, get what the medico needs. And you, Tusratti, take him over to the west tunnel.”

It was as if I had ceased to exist as a person, but had become an object to be moved around at their desire. In my role of dazed plague survivor I was willing to have it so. The X-Tee crewman urged me down to the riverbank, I moving as slowly and with as much of a limp as I could manage. There were others already at work there. Across the rocks and foaming water a section bridge had been anchored into place. It would appear they knew this place very well and had visited it before, making their preparations for setting up a base, if even a temporary one.

At the urging of my guard I wavered across the bridge, and through the ruins beyond. Our goal was one of those holes in the cliff face. But not the one to which the other crewmen were heading. What they carried were mining tools of the kind such as were used to pick riches from dead moons and asteroids.

“In-“ commanded the X-Tee. The hole to which he pointed was the farthest to the left. Then was debris from recent digging dumped on either side of the opening. But whatever they had been hunting they had not found here. They must be taking the holes in turn and were now working that two away from the one into which I was being ushered.

“I am - am hungry -“ I halted as if to get my breath, being careful to steady myself against a rock. “I am hungry - I need food-“

There was no readable expression on the X-Tee’s face. The hands of his upper pair of arms rested warningly on the butts of his double supply of lasers. For a long moment he stared at me and then he turned and called to one of the men on his way to the other tunnel.

In answer the other detached a packet from his belt and tossed it in our general direction. He had trusted to the unusual talents of my guard, and it did not fall short. Instead one of the X-Tee’s upper limbs snapped out to twice the length I would have believed possible, caught the flying object, and pulled back to hand it to me.

My fingers closed about a tube of E-ration and I did not have to fake the avidity with which I gripped its tip between my teeth, bit through the stopper, and spit it out, before sucking the semiliquid contents. No meal of my imagination could have topped the flavor of what now filled my mouth, or the satisfaction afforded me as it flowed in gulps down into me. The mixture was meant to sustain a man under working conditions; and it would renew my strength even more than usual food.

“On!” My guard thumped me on the shoulder with a stick which one of the extraordinarily agile limbs had picked up from the ground. He was careful, I noted, not to touch me. Apparently X-Tees also shared the fear of plague.

Sucking at the tube, I lurched on. And it seemed that the promised strength of the food was already working in me.

The tunnel was a dark mouth opening to engulf us. But the X-Tee produced a beamer. That this was an artificial way was most apparent. And for some distance inside, the stone showed only the marks of its first working. Then recent scars were displayed in great slashes, both horizontal and vertical, until in places they formed a grid.

I saw the glisten of crystals still embedded in the slashes or lying in broken lumps on the ground. And my interest almost made me betray myself. But I remembered just in time that I was playing stupid. Apparently these were not what the crewmen had been searching for. Though they now caught and reflected the light as if a wealth of gems were spilled, yet they had been discarded. This struck me as odd, since ordinarily no Guild ship would pass up anything remotely suggesting profit.

We came to a hollowed-out space where the tunnel ended. Here the walls had been quarried in great rough arches and niches, as if those who had worked here had been so sure they were about to find what they sought that they had used their tools in a frenzy. The X-Tee motioned to a pile of rock. “Sit!”

I lowered myself stiffly to obey his order, still sucking at the tube of E-ration. He planted the beamer on another pile across the open space and turned it to high-diffuse, to light all but the innermost portions of the hollows in the walls. Then he took his place between me and the tunnel entrance.

During the silence which followed I could hear the drip-drip of water somewhere, though there was no evidence of moisture in the tunnel. And a little later I could both hear and feel through the rock the activities of those working farther along in the cliff.

Was this the place to which the zero stone had been pointing us? The discarded crystals here had no resemblance to that murky stone. But that had been exposed to centuries in space, and to whatever use as a source of energy its discoverers had put it to.

I leaned over to pick up one of the broken prisms. My guard placed a hand on the butt of a laser, but he made no move to stop me. This was a piece of quartz, I thought. But of that I could not be sure. One must never make snap judgments about finds on unknown planets. Vondar would have put any such material through exhaustive tests before he might venture an opinion, and even then I had known him to reserve final classification. He carried with him certain finds he was not sure of, even after years of study, since they possessed qualities which were beyond any code. All dealers accumulated a few such, and one of their principal activities when meeting a fellow gemologist was producing these mystery stones for comparison.

So what I held could be worthless quartz, or something quite different.

There was a sound from the tunnel and the medico entered, pushing before him a box which ran on rollers. Behind him came the two crewmen with other equipment. Then I became the object of tests.

I think first they still tried to find in me some seeds of the disease which had left such visible marks on my body. And the medico also applied a renewing ray to my bruised leg, so that I could no longer use lameness as a cover. But I could not, dared not resist - even when they at last locked me into a reader-helm. The very fact that they carried such a thing with them suggested they found its use necessary, illegal as that was.

With its pads locked to my forehead and the nape of my neck I could only answer with the strict truth, or what I thought was the truth. After they had reached that stage of the proceedings they summoned the Captain and it was he who fed me the questions.

“You are one Murdoc Jern, son to Hywel Jern--.”

“No.”

He was startled by that and looked to the medico, who leaned quickly to read the dial and then nodded to his commander.

“You are not Murdoc Jern?” the Captain began again.

“I am Murdoc Jern.”

“Then your father was Hywel Jern-“

“No.”

The Captain looked once more to the medico and received a second nod of assurance that the machine was functioning properly.

“Who was your father then?”

“I do not know.”

“Were you a member of Hywel Jern’s household?”

“Yes.”

“Did you consider yourself his son?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know of your real parents?”

“Nothing. I was told I was a duty child.”

An expression of relief flickered momentarily on the Captains face.

“But you were in Jern’s confidence?”

“He taught me.”

“About gems?”

“Yes.”

“And he apprenticed you to Ustle?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because, I believe, he wanted a future for me. Since his true son would have the shop upon his death.”

I could not stop the flow of words. It was as if I stood slightly apart and listened, as if it was I who answered. Now I sensed that once again the answer I had given was baffled.

“Did he ever show you a certain ring, one made to fit over the glove of a space suit?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you where it came from?”

“That it had been brought to him for hock-sale. That it had been found on the body of an alien floating in space.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing except that he believed there was something to be learned about it.”

“And he wanted you, during your travels with Ustle, to discover what you could?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you discover?”

“Nothing.”

The Captain seated himself on a folding stool one of his men had provided. He took from a seal pocket of his tunic a pale-green stick, put it between his teeth, and chewed upon it reflectively, as if studying on some new and vital question. At last he asked:

“Did you ever see the ring in later years?”

“Yes.”

“When and where?”

“On Angkor after my father’s death.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I took it with me.”

“You have it now?” He leaned forward, his eyes fully open, both pairs of lids raised.

“No.”

“Where is it?”

“I do not know.”

Again exasperation, this time strong enough to bring a sharp exclamation from him.

“State the last time you saw it and under what circumstances.”

“I gave it to Eet. He took it away.”

“Eet!” And who is Eet?”

“The mutant born of the ship’s cat on the Vestris.”

I think that had he not been so sure of the infallibility of the reader-helm, he would not have taken that for the truth. For it must have been the last answer he expected.

“Was that” - he spoke slowly now - “here on this planet, or on the Vestris?”

“Here.”

“And when?”

“Just before your ship planeted.”

“Where is this Eet now?” Again he leaned forward eagerly.

“Dead, I believe. He was crossing the top of the wreck when you flamed down. He must have been burned off by your deter rockets.”

“You- “ The Captain turned his head. “Thangsfeld, jump to it! I want every palm’s width of that ship’s surface searched and all the ground around it! Now!”

One of the crewman left at a run. Once more the Captain turned to me.

“Why did you give the ring to Eet?”

“The ring pulled us toward this place rather than to the wrecked ship. Eet wanted to know why.”

“Eet wanted to know,” he repeated. “What do you mean? You have stated that this creature was a mutant born of a ship’s cat - not an intelligent being.” Once more he looked to the medico for confirmation of my truthfulness.

“I do not know what Eet is,” I replied. “But he is not an animal, save perhaps outwardly.”

“Why did he and not you take this ring to the source of attraction?”

“We were besieged by the natives. Eet had a chance of getting out, I did not.”

“But why was it so important that the ring get out, via this Eet?”

“I do not know. Eet wanted to take it.”

“In what direction?”

“Farther on - over the river.”

“So!” He was on his feet in one lithe movement. “We are on the right track after all.” Once more he looked down at me. “Do you know what the ring stone is?”

“A source of energy - I think.”

“A good enough answer.” Still he looked at me, his inner eyelids almost closed, giving his eyes a disquieting opacity.

“What do we do Captain, with him-?” one of the human crewman asked.

“For the present, nothing. Keep him here. But then, even if he runs loose, I do not think he is going anywhere.” He laughed. “After all we owe him some small thanks. More if we find the ring at the wreck.”

They unstrapped me. I was very tired and willing to yield to my fatigue. But I remembered they had not asked me - the why and how of my leaving the Vestris. Had they swallowed my plague story and so would not question me about that? The indications were that they had not been in touch with the Free Trader, at least not since my escape. If these represented those who had bought me free from Tanth for their own purposes, they had not been in direct contact with other members of their team lately.

But this time I did not have Eet to depend upon, and thinking of Eet hurt more than I would have earlier believed possible. I hoped that he had not suffered, that that flash of violence had marked an instantaneous ending for him.

Would they find his body with the ring still tied about his neck? And what did they want it for - to lead them to others of its kind as it had guided me across space to the dead stones in the derelict? That such gems might be a revolutionary source of power was an easy guess. And such power, in the hands of the Guild, was worth far more to them than the ransom of a whole system of planets.

The medico and the other human crewman gathered their apparatus and left. But the X-Tee continued to sit by the door of the tunnel, on the stool left by the Captain. He, too, had pulled a green stick out and was chewing on it, but, while his eyes were half closed in enjoyment, his fronds pointed in my direction.

I slept then, and awoke to a shaking of the rock around me, a roar in my ears. There was another ship coming in. Perhaps the Vestris. If so, the Captain might be back with more questions. I lay listening, watching my guard.

He stood looking down the tunnel. However, the fronds still pointed at me, and his upper hands hovered over laser butts.

It was clear from the attitude of the X-Tee that this second ship was not expected. Therefore - who? The Patrol? Or some innocent scout or trader arriving just at the wrong time? That the new arrival was about to walk into a trap, I did not doubt.

The thunder of the planeting died away. Now I could not feel or hear the vibration caused by the workers in the other tunnel.

“What is it?” I dared to ask my guard.

His attentive fronds twitched, but he did not turn his head. Only now the lasers were drawn as if he were prepared to repel an invasion.

We continued to wait. I tried other questions until the wave of a weapon in my direction silenced me. Then there was a tramp of feet in the passage and a voice raised in a hail. My guard restored one laser to its holster, held the other ready.

Three of them came in, human crewmen. They carried a struggling bundle which they dumped without ceremony and with extra roughness on the floor. Once in port I had seen a crewman, drunk on the maddening lorthdrip, subdued by a police tangle gun. And now I looked upon a captive completely enmeshed in the same fashion. Among the coils of gummy rope I caught sight of the black tunic known across space. They had bagged a Patrolman, and securely.

THIRTEEN

He had sense enough to cease struggling as he was dropped, so that his bonds did not tighten. Luckily none had crossed his face or throat. But his captors were so sure of him they walked away, leaving the two of us to the X-Tee. He surveyed the Patrolman, no expression on his face. Then he returned to his stool.

The Patrolman’s eyes were open and, I judged, he was busy examining his prison and its occupants. He stared a long time at me. The ordeal of questioning under the probe, though sleep had followed, had left me weak. And not only weak, but caught in a curious lethargy, disinclined to action. I could foresee that at any moment the X-Tee might turn a laser on me. But I was no longer afraid.

After a while one of the human crewmen came in, pitched in my general direction another tube of E-ration. Though I felt hunger stir in me when I saw it, a strong effort of will was required to put out my hand, shift my body to reach it. And I held it in my shaking fingers for some time before I could summon the energy to suck at its contents.

With the flow of food into my mouth, that dreamy, half-awake state broke, and I aroused enough to know that this was no nightmare but grim and threatening reality. The entangled Patrolman lay where they had dropped him, watching me. I had sucked about half the tube before I realized they had left nothing for him. Nor could he feed himself. I started to crawl to where he lay.

“Naw-“ It was not good Basic, no more than a guttural bark. A laser appeared in our guard’s hand, his intent of using it plain. I halted. He waved me back.

“Staaay-tharrr-“

I stayed. But I did not finish the tube. It would appear that our guard was determined to keep his two charges well apart.

Now I returned the Patrolman’s stare. He was immobile in the net casing. Had he landed here alone, as a scout? Or did he have companions who would come seeking him? I would have given a great deal at that moment to be able to communicate with him as I had with Eet.

It could well be that I was a latent esper, and my talent - though limited - had been so aroused by Eet that I could at least make my fellow prisoner aware I was striving to contact him. So I put most of my energy into a beamed call.

What followed was so great a surprise that I betrayed my astonishment and had to dissemble quickly by throwing both hands to my head as if struck by a sudden pain - though how good a cover that could be I did not know. The X-Tee was on his feet, his feather fronds sweeping swiftly back and forth.

I had been answered. Not by the man who lay across the cavern - but by Eet! And as quickly as that touch of recognition had come, it was gone - a single flash of light across the dark of a moonless night.

The X-Tee advanced to the center of the working, his fronds still swinging, as if those antennae could pick up our communication. And the Patrolman looked from one of us to the other, inquiry plain on his face.

There was nothing more, and I could guess the reason for Eet’s caution. If the X-Tee had been able to sense that touch, then mind speech was to be avoided. But the very fact the mutant was alive was almost as good as if someone had dropped a laser into my reach.

I continued to play a part, huddling together, my hands to my head. The guard halted by me and kicked out, the metal-enforced tip of his boot landing painfully against my shin.

“Whaaat-do-you-?” His guttural mouthing of Basic was hard to understand.

“Pain- in my head- hurts-“

“Mind-talk-you-“ He did not make that a question.

I felt then a kind of clumsy, fumbling thought approach which was only a feeble pushing, bearing no relation to Eet’s. It was easy to withstand such a probe. The X-Tee must have esper powers to a degree, but perhaps they worked better among his own kind. At any rate he got nothing from me.

Now he begin a crisscross search of the cavern, his fronds ever in motion. That they were highly astute sense organs, I did not doubt. But whether they could nose out Eet I did not know.

My confidence arose as I saw that the uneasiness of the X-Tee did not abate, but rather grew. Had he been able to get a quick line on Eet, he would not have continued to prowl but would have gone into action.

Where was Eet? I had no idea from which direction that flash of recognition had come. But that he was alive-! Now I hoped furiously that they would not question me again. But if the guard continued to be suspicious perhaps they would.

He stood close to the Patrolman now, his fronds still seeking. Slowly he turned, then put his head back and looked up at the dim expanse overhead. Eet - was Eet up there somewhere?

Clearly the X-Tee’s attention was now riveted and I could only believe that he had a line on the esper tie. But how could he? Eet had been quiet.

The laser swung up, pointed at a spot almost directly above the guard. There were hollows in plenty there, and they might hide anything. A mass of crystals larger than my head was visible. He fired-

A flash of light blinded me. I had reason enough to cry out and cover my eyes now. I heard a gasping which could have come from either the Patrolman or the guard. A thud - and a rattling-

To be blind was horror at that moment. I feared to move, sure that ray was bringing down the rocks over us, to bury us alive. When that did not follow, I tried vainly to see through a blood-red fog.

“Are you dead?” That demand which penetrated my dark was no call from Eet, nor was it the bark of our guard. Basic in human voice - it could only come from the Patrolman.

“Where are you?” I asked, groping out with one hand.

“Ahead, a little to your right!” he answered swiftly.

“You must have been looking up as he fired-“

“What happened?” I did not try to get to my feet, but crawled forward on hands and knees, sweeping now and then a hand before me.

“He beamed straight up. Brought down a hunk of crystal on his head. Look out, he is right before you now-“

But my hands had already encountered the body. I made myself examine it by touch, locate one of the lasers. And all the time I feared I was blind.

I edged around the body and crawled on until one of my hands touched the Patrolman. To burn off his bonds was a job demanding good sight, and I could not do it blind.

“Wait!”

I settled back on my heels, a surge of relief breaking like a high tide in me. “Eet!”

He came out of nowhere as far as I was concerned. I felt the pat of his hand-paws on mine and I released the laser into his hold. I guessed that he was quick and efficient about freeing the Patrolman. For it was only moments later that a human hand fell on my shoulder, drawing me up to my feet. I wavered there, almost as I had when I had played the role of plague wanderer for the Captain. Eet climbed me as if I were a tree and his weight once again ringed my shoulders. I felt the tickle of his whiskers against my cheek.

“Hold still! Let me see your eyes-“ That was the Patrolman. I flinched involuntarily from his touch and then obeyed. I could feel him spread the lids, the sting of moisture against the balls.

“Close and hold!” he ordered. “From my aid kit - that ought to help.”

“They will have heard-“ I put up my hand to touch Eet’s wiry fur. “They will come-“

“Not for a while,” Eet answered quickly. “It is night and they have posted an outer guard, but there are none in any of the tunnels. We have a good chance of getting free. This guard was the only sensitive among them.”

My hand was caught in a firm grip which pulled me on. Eet meanwhile directed my steps around piles of debris. We must have re-entered the tunnel, heading for the outside.

“Who are you?” the Patrolman asked. “A hostage?”

I gave him the version I had edited for the Guild men. “I caught an unknown disease, was spaced from a ship in an LB. It made tape landing here and I was hunted by natives. I took refuge in a wrecked ship. Then these landed. They made me prisoner after their medico pronounced me clean.”

“You are lucky they did not just beam you down, he returned. “I wonder why they did not.”

I had to supply him with a plausible answer. “They thought I knew about what they hunt here. I am an apprentice gemologist”

“Gems!” He paused and then added, “They are conducting mining operations - that is true.”

“Were you tailing them? And where is your ship?” I counterquestioned.

“I am a scout.” He gave me the most disheartening answer for one hoping for a quick way out of trouble. “They took me when I came out after landing. But my ship is on time lock - they cannot break into her. If we can reach her- But what- or who- is your friend?”

“I am Eet,” Eet answered for himself. “This human and I are in defensive alliance - which was good for you, Patrolman. To get him free I had also to extend aid to you.”

“Then you did engineer that fall of rock,” I observed.

Eet corrected me. No, the creature brought it on himself. I only gave him mind direction, confused him to make him think he saw something threatening above. He was esper, but to a limited degree save with his own kind. He lost his head and shot at a shadow which was not there, bringing down the rock.”

My hand slipped along Eet’s body and he suffered that examination by touch. I did not feel the twined roots about his long neck, or any indication that he still carried the ring. Nor in that company could I ask questions. For the less the Patrolman knew the better. The Patrol ever takes the view that the good of many is superior to the good of the individual.

I sensed that Eet was in complete agreement with me on that point, and that the ring was in a safe place. But I fretted a little - no place save my own custody really satisfied me.

“Try to use your eyes,” said the Patrolman.

The sensation of being closed in was gone, and a cool wind laden with outdoor scents blew about us. I lifted my lids and blinked rapidly. That sweep of violent red had faded, and though there were some shadowy blotches, I could see blearily.

Not too far away a rude sentry post had been erected from debris of the mine tunnels and blocks of the ruins. There was a beamer mounted on its uneven wall, and at intervals that swept, not toward the tunnel mouths, but across the jumble of ruins, touching the broken walls which had once dammed the river.

“They fear an attack from the natives,” Eet explained.

“Clubs against lasers?” I scoffed.

“Clubs in the night, when one cannot see well - the odds are not as uneven as you think.”

“Why do they not just hole up in their ship?” was my second question.

“They have equipment in the tunnels. Once before they tried retreating into the ship at night. The natives smashed things that could not he repaired - they had to go off world for more.”

“You seem to know a lot about them!” flashed the Patrolman.

“You,” returned Eet in his most insufferable voice, “are one Celph Hory, ten years with the force. You are a native of Loki, one of four sons, two of whom are dead. You were sent here, not on a routine scout, but to search out the source of a well-sustained rumor that the Guild has made a discovery which will give them superiority in space. You have orders to keep under cover ( which you did not carry out well, mainly because your ship had been skillfully sabotaged, something you did not discover until you were in orbit here ) and to report back, not revealing your presence to the Guild. Is this not true?”

I heard a breath drawn in sharply. “You read minds.” Hory made it close to an accusation.

“I merely follow the instinct bred into me, as you follow yours, Hory. Be glad that I do, or you would have been prisoner until Captain Nactitl gave the order for your burning. He was debating the folly of keeping you any longer an hour ago. I would suggest as speedy a withdrawal as possible. These miners have not come upon what they are seeking, but they are close-“

“You found it!” I broke in. By this time I could pick up not only Eet’s mental speech but some of his emotions. He was at his smuggest now, suggesting that once again he had bested those physically stronger and bigger.

“So far they look in the wrong place. However, sooner or later that will occur to them. Nactitl is not in the least stupid, and certainly not to be underrated. He has only failed so far because he did not have the right guide.”

The right guide! The ring which Eet had taken, which- which might have drawn him to the source. I wanted to ask questions so badly they choked my throat, buzzed in my head. But if he answered them, then Hory, too, would have that information.

“What have they to find here?” broke in the Patrolman, and I knew he would continue to seek an answer. It all depended now on how much he knew of gems. If I guessed wrongly and he had any training in that field, then my secret was threatened. But again Eet took the lead, giving me a briefing in his reply.

“A source of revenue, which also means power.” It was very easy to forget at such times he was only a small furred creature. His communication was not that of an equal, but soared only too often into patronizing explanations. “This was a mine of - how many years ago we cannot guess. But I would say the diggings of one of the Forerunner civilizations. Unfortunately for the present-day seekers, they have been picked clean.”

“But you said Nactitl was just not looking in the right place-“

“He searches the old diggings. If he looked among the ruins he might find other clues. Unfortunately we cannot linger to investigate on our own. I would suggest that we find your ship,” he said to Hory, “and lift as soon as possible. To hide out in this area is unwise. The sniffers are out-“

“Sniffers?”

“The natives; they hunt largely by scent. At any rate the Guild activity here is drawing more and more of them and they have established a ring about the landing field. As yet they are not ready to attack, but they very efficiently serve as a means of confining offworlder activity to this general vicinity. Even to reach your ship will be something of a problem which will increase materially with every passing moment. But one man alone is not going to change Captain Nactitl’s Mind and-“

I felt Eet’s body stiffen, his head go up and forward.

“What is it?”

“We have less time than I had hoped!” His message flashed to us. “They endeavored to reach your late guard by hand com. When he did not answer they ordered a general alert.”

We had only those few instants of warning. The beamer mounted on the sentry post went into stepped-up action, sweeping its light wider and farther. But bright as it was in the open, it still could not penetrate the hollow pools of shadow which were to be found among the ruins. And we had luckily dropped into one of those.

“To the right-“ Eet took over direction. “Move out at the next sweep.”

“To the left.” Hory was equally insistent. “My ship-“

“It will not be that easy,” Eet snapped. “We must go right to eventually win left. And we shall have to go deeper into the fringe of the ruins, maybe even out into the open-“

“Do we cross the river?” To my mind that would be the point of greatest vulnerability. I did not see how we could pass that under the fire of an alerted camp.

“For so much favor we may thank whatever gods or powers your species recognizes,” Eet returned. “Luckily this representative of your law chose to set down on this bank. But it is necessary to flank their post and to avoid any party coming from their ship to reinforce the guard there. Now- right-“

I had been watching the sweep of the beam and it now touched the point farthest from us. So no prompting from Eet was needed to send me scuttling to the next patch of dark I had already marked as a good hiding place. Hory did not leap with me, but my move must have spurred him to action, for he was little behind me in reaching that new lurking place.

Unfortunately the cover seemed designed to lead us farther and farther from our real goal. Yet we could now hear sounds from over the river and see the flash of beamers, which marked a search party setting out from the ship. One of those beamers was set up to illuminate not only their bridge, but a goodly portion of land on our side, an open field of light I saw no way to avoid.

“Not over, but under - at that next hole.” Eet’s hind claws dug convulsively into my flesh as I gathered my legs under me, readying for the next dash.

He must mean the next patch of deep shadow, but what his “under, not over” meant I was not to learn until I reached it, or rather was engulfed in it. For it was not merely a lurking place behind a pile of stones, but indeed a hole, into which I tumbled.

I flung out my arms and my fingers scraped rock on three sides. Then Hory landed half on me, sending me teetering toward the fourth. I did not strike any barrier there as I fought for my balance, my feet in their pack coverings skidding on a smooth stone surface. Again I felt about me. Walls not too far away on either side - but open before. And I heard Hory scuffling behind.

“Ahead-“ Eet urged.

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“I know.” He was confident. “Ahead.”

I felt my way along. I was in a passage. Whether it was indeed some runway planned by the builders I did not know. It might have been fashioned by the tumbling of walls. The flooring inclined and I splashed into a pool of water. There was a dank smell which grew thicker as we advanced.

“Where do we travel? Under the river?” I asked.

“No. Though perhaps river water does seep here. Look now to your right”

Ahead was a faint glow which brightened as I slipped and slid on. Through my mind shot a memory of those slime trails within the wreck. Would we find those here also? But at least we could depend upon Eet for a warning-

I came to the site of the glow. There was a square opening in the wall to my right where a block had been removed or had fallen out. And through this improvised window, I looked down into a chamber of some size. Down its center ran a table of the same stone as formed the walls, save that this was not so eroded. And set on it were boxes. They had been metal; now they were pitted and worn, and some had fallen into rusty dust, only their outlines marked on the table. But there was one very near to our window which appeared whole, and in it were stones which gave forth feeble sparks of life. The glow which had drawn my attention did not come from those, but from what lay beside the box. Eet uncurled from my shoulders and passed in a leap through the window to the surface of the table. He raced along it until he came to the ring, thrusting one of his handpaws through it, using the other to draw it farther up his shoulder like a barbaric armlet.

He made a second leap, back onto the stone ledge of the window, then climbed to my shoulders, stuffing the ring inside my tunic, where it lay, almost too warm for comfort, against my skin.

“What is it?” To my surprise Hory’s voice did not come from behind me, but from some distance farther back along the passage. “Where are you? What did you stop for?”

“There is a wall opening here,” Eet reported smoothly. “But it is of no service to us. The way ahead, however, is clear.”

I was puzzled. I had believed Hory directly on my heels and I had been sure he must have seen what lay in the room. Now it appeared that he had not. But I asked no questions of Eet.

Once more the passage sloped - but now up. It was leading us in the direction we had been aiming for. We took it step by careful step. I listened intently and knew the others must be doing the same.

“There are many loose stones ahead,” Eet informed us. “You must move with the greatest care. But it is not too far now before we reach the fringe of the ruins. Beyond that we have yet to avoid the sniffers.”

We emerged into heaps of loose rubble. My sight had returned to normal and I saw enough to guess that this material marked the miners’ dump. We plotted a path through it with caution. But luckily the higher heaps were between us and the sweeping beam. The activity was now on the cliff side of the river, and at the ruins nearest the tunnel beamers were turning the night to day.

But our luck held as we crept from the edge of the last rubble pile into the brush. This was tangled and thick, but it made a curtain for us.

“They will expect us to make for the Patrol ship,” I pointed out to Eet.

“Naturally. But they will expect that to be bait in a trap for both of you. Probably they have already taken steps there-“

“What!” Hory stopped short. “But they could not interfere with the ship itself - it is on personal time lock.”

“Such trifles might not deter a determined Guild expert,” Eet replied. “But Nactitl has not been able to foresee my presence or some other minor mishaps. I tell you, keep on. Once we reach the ship we need not worry about escape off world.”

Knowing Eet, I trusted that tone of assurance. Hory probably did not, but he followed as if he had no choice - which in truth he did not, unless he proposed to skulk about the terrain or go into suicidal battle with the Guild.

FOURTEEN

“Sniffers!”

Eet’s warning halted me. There was enough light and noise behind us to inform the natives that those of the ship’s camp were hunting.

“Where?” Perhaps Hory was now willing to depend upon Eet’s senses, if not to accept his advice.

“Left - in the tree.”

That was not as tall as the forest giants, but it did tower well above us. And its foliage made so impenetrable a cone of dark that no eyes of ours could sight what might hide there.

“He waits to leap as we pass beneath,” Eet informed us. “Swing well away; he will leap but fall short.”

This time we were not unarmed. Hory had one of the X-Tee’s lasers, I another. To spray about without a definite target, however, would be folly. I held the weapon at ready and started around the tree.

It was like a blow in my face, striking deep into my head, then seeming to center in my ears. I staggered under it and heard Hory cry out in equal torment.

Eet twisted on my shoulders, thrust in his claws to keep his position. I forgot all about any menace from the natives; all I wanted was to be rid of the agony in my head.

“-hand - take Hory’s hand - hold-“

Eet’s mind voice was almost muffled by the pain in my head. His hand-paws had gone to my ears, gripping them, and I could feel his body resting against my head, an addition to my misery.

“Take Hory’s hand!” The command was emphasized by a sharp twist of my ears. I tried to lift my hand to pull that tormentor from my shoulders, but found that, instead of obeying me, my flesh and muscle were flung around, and my fingers seemed to close of their own accord on warm skin and bone, in a grip riveted past my breaking. The Patrolman, moaning, tried to break away from me, to no effect.

“Now- on!” Again Eet twisted my ears. Dazed from the pain in my head, I stumbled in the direction he aimed me, towing Hory behind.

There was a shrilling from the tree, and something dark fell, not leaped, from it, to lie writhing on the ground. We dimly heard other sounds, a rustling of movement throughout the brush. Things hiding there were now moving past us toward the cliffs.

Only Eet’s sharp hold and constant misuse of my ears kept me going. For, as I moved, it was as if I waded through a swift current determined to bear me back toward the ruins and the Guild ship, which I had to fight with all my strength.

It was dark here, but Eet rode me as a man might mount a beast of burden, guiding me by his hold, steering me here and there. And I could only obey those tugs, always drawing Hory along by a grip I could not release.

For years, or so it seemed, that zigzag march lasted. Then I smelled charred vegetation and we came to where the growth was shriveled by rocket blast, or burned off altogether. Before us, standing on its fins, was the Patrol scout ship.

Only a dark bulk - I could not make out a ramp, or any dark hatch open on its side. And I remembered Hory’s talk of a time seal. If he could not lift that at will, we had reached our goal but were still barred from safety.

The pull on me, the pain in my head, still existed, but either its force had lessened, or I was now so accustomed to it that the agony had decreased. Eet still kept his grip on my ears, but when I paused before the ship he did not urge me on.

Instead he turned his attention to Hory, though my brain, too, received his imperative command:

“Hory, the time seal - can you denegate it?”

The Patrolman swayed back and forth, tugging feebly against my grip, trying to turn toward the ruins.

“Hory!” This time Eet’s demand for attention was as painful to the receptive mind as the torment from behind.

“What-“ Not quite a word, more nearly a moan. With his free hand the Patrolman pawed at his head. The laser was gone; he must have dropped it at the attack.

“The seal - on - the - ship-“ Eet’s words were heavy in impact, like the ancient solid-type projectiles when they struck into flesh. “Deactivate the seal - now-“

Hory turned his head. I could see him only dimly. With his free hand he fumbled at the front of his tunic. All his movements seemed so uncoordinated that one could not believe he could complete any action. He brought out a hand com.

“Code!” Eet kept at him relentlessly. “What - is - the - code?”

As if he could not even be sure of the position of his mouth, Hory raised his hand in a series of jerks. He mumbled. I could understand none of the sounds clearly. And whether, in spite of his clouded mind, he was responding to Eet’s order, I had no idea. His arm dropped heavily, to swing by his side. It seemed he had failed.

Then there was a noise from the ship. The hatch opened and the tongue of a narrow landing ramp licked forth, to touch the seared earth only feet away.

“In!” Eet’s order rang almost as shrill as one of the sniffers’ screams.

I dragged Hory along. The ramp was very narrow and steep, and I had to negotiate it sideways in order to tow the Patrolman. But step by step we climbed the span to enter the hatch.

It was like walking into a soundproofed chamber and slamming the door behind us. Instantly the tumult in my head ended. I leaned against the wall of the compartment just within the hatch, feeling the drip of my own sweat from my chin. My relief was so great it left me weak and shaking.

By the glow of the light which came on as the hatch closed behind us, I could see that Hory was in no better state. His face was greenish-white under the space tan and slick with sweat. He had bitten his lip and drops of blood still gathered there in bubbles, to feed a thin trickle down his chin.

“They- had- a compeller- on us-“ He got out each word as if to form it with his savaged lips was a fearsome task. “They-“

Eet had released his hold on my ears and had dropped down to my shoulders once again.

“Better get off planet.” If the compeller had affected the mutant, he did not show it. And now it was far easier to follow his suggestion than to undertake any action on my own.

I think Hory was in much the same state. He lurched away from the wall and drew himself through the inner hatch. As we followed I heard the clang of the rewinding ramp, the automatic sealing of the door behind us. Again I felt a wave of relief.

To get at us now they would have to use a superdestruct. And the Guild ship, as well equipped as it might be, could not carry one of those - it was not large enough.

Hory took the lead, pulling up the core ladder of the ship. Then Eet climbed with a speed which left both of us behind. We passed by two levels to enter the control cabin. The Patrolman reached the pilot’s swing chair and began to buckle himself in. He moved as one in a dream and I do not think he was really aware of my presence, though he must have been of Eet’s.

Patrol scouts are not meant to carry more than one man. But in emergencies there might be exceptions, and there was a second blastoff seat in the rear of the cabin. I got into that and was making fast the straps when Hory leaned forward to press the course tape release. Eet sprang from somewhere and lay full length along my body.

There was an awakening of lights on the board, a vibration through the ship. Then came the pressure of blast-off. I had known that of the Free Traders and small freighters, which had seemed so much worse than that of liners. But this was a huge hand squeezing me down into darkness.

When I saw dizzily again, the lights on the board no longer played in flashing patterns but were set and steady. Hory lay in his seat, his head forward on his chest. Eet stirred against me. Then his head arose slowly and his beads of eyes met mine.

“We are out-“

“He set a course tape,” I said. “To the nearest Patrol mother ship or base, I suppose.”

“If he can reach it,” Eet observed. “We may have bought time only.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that Nactitl cannot afford to lose us. The Guild are playing for the largest stakes they have yet found - for many of your human centuries. They will not allow the fate of a single Patrol scout to upset their plans.”

“They cannot mount a destruct - not on their ship.”

“But they may have other devices, just as useful to them. Also, do you yourself want to be delivered to a Patrol base?”

“What do you mean?” I glanced at Hory. If he was conscious he must be able to “hear” Eet’s communications.

“He still sleeps,” the mutant reassured me. “But- we may not have much time, and I do not know how much an unconscious brain can pick up to retain for the future. This is true - what Nactitl seeks he has not yet found. There are only the stones in the storage vault. But they were not mined on that planet, as Nactitl and the Patrol may continue to believe.”

“How do you know that? What about those cliff tunnels?”

“They sought something else there, those old ones. No, the cache under the ruins held their fuel supply. But Nactitl will believe they found them in the mines, and so will others. However, the man who does eventually find the true source of the stones can make his own luck, if he is clever and discreet. Also - those stones looked dead, did they not?”

“Very dead.”

“Your ring stone partly activated them. Just as it can give a boost to any conventional fuel in these ships of yours. You have a bargaining point, but you must use it well. There will be those who would kill you for that ring. And you have more to fear than just the Guild.”

His head swiveled around on that exceedingly mobile neck and he looked meaningfully at the Patrolman.

“To stand against the Patrol would require more resources than I have,” I answered. The illegality of it did not bother me. The ring was my heritage, and the fact that some musty law made by men I had never seen or heard of might be produced to wrest it from me only raised my anger. I added, “But I will fight for what I now hold.”

“Just so.” There was satisfaction in Eet’s agreement. “You can seem to yield and yet win.”

“Win what? A fortune - with everyone sniping at me to get at the secret and tear me down? I want none of that.”

Perhaps Hywel Jern, who could have had wealth and yet had settled prudently for comfort, and might have finished out his life in peace had he not been a curious man, had molded me. Or perhaps the need to be free which had kept Vondar Ustle on the move had rubbed off on his assistant.

“You can buy freedom.” Eet’s thought followed mine easily. “What have you now with Vondar dead? Nothing. Bargain well, as he taught you, when the time comes. You will know what you want most in that hour.”

“What you want,” I countered.

Now his head turned so that he could eye me. “What I want - just so. But our trails run together. I have told you that before. Apart we are weak, together we are strong, a combination to accomplish much if you have the courage-“

“Eet - what are you?”

“A living being,” he replied, “with certain gifts which I have placed at your disposal from time to time, and certainly not to your disadvantage.” Again he read my thoughts and added, “Of course, I have used you, but also you have used me. You would have been dead long since had we not. And to your species, death of the body is an end - do you not believe it so?”

“Not all of us do.”

“That is as it may be,” he replied ambiguously. “But at any rate, we are together in this life and it is to our mutual advantage to have this pact continue.”

I could not deny his logic, though still the suspicion stayed deep in my mind that Eet had plans of his own and would eventually maneuver me into serving them.

“He is waking.” Eet looked at Hory. “Tell him to check his speed.”

I was no pilot. But I could see there was a red light flashing on the board. That had about it a suggestion of alarm. Hory made a snorting sound and straightened in his web seat, setting it to swinging. He rubbed his hands across his eyes and then leaned forward to look at the board, his attitude that of one alerted to trouble.

“Eet says - look to the speed-“ I said.

His hand shot out to thumb a red button under that red flash. The red spark vanished, a yellow one flashed in its place, held steady for a short space, then became red again. Once more Hory tried the button. But this time there was no change in the light. His fingers played a swift pattern over the other buttons and levers, but the signal remained stubbornly red.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“Traction beam.” Hory spit out that explanation as if it were a curse. “They have lifted behind us and slapped a traction on. But a ship of that size, how could they be so equipped?” Still he continued to try his keys. Once the light paled, but only momentarily.

“They can pull us back?”

“They are trying. But they cannot down us - not yet. They can only keep us out of hyper. And they may think they can board - if so they are going to be surprised. But they can keep us tied near that planet.”

“Waiting for reinforcements? Why cannot you do the same - call for help?”

“They have a com blanket over us. If they expect reinforcements they were already sure of their coming. I have heard of Guild superships; this must be one of them.”

“What do we do then - just wait-?”

“Not if we are wise,” Eet cut in. “They do expect aid and it will be of such nature as to take this ship easily. What you stumbled on here, Hory, is a Guild operation of such magnitude that they are willing to throw many of their undercover reserves in - or did you arrive here with a suspicion that that was so?”

“I suppose you have a suggestion?” Hory asked bitingly. “I can maintain my shield but not break their hold - to do that is to lose my own escape force. They could reel us in before I could fire effectively.”

Eet did have an answer. “The ring stone, Murdoc-“

“How?” I had felt the action of the ring on my own body, its drawing power across the wastes of space, and on the planet below. But in what way could it be used on this ship to break a traction beam which held so powerful a vessel in bonds?

“Take it down, to the engine room,” Eet ordered.

His knowledge was certainly greater than mine, and I continued to wonder where he had gained it. Reading minds seemed easy enough for him, but how he knew uses for the baffling gem I could not understand. Was it all part of Eet’s mysterious past, before he had, as he put it, obtained a body to serve him in the present? Was - could Eet have a link with those who had once used the stones for motive power? How long had Eet been a seed, or stone, or that thing Valcyr had swallowed?

Even as I speculated I was unbuckling, preparing to leave my seat. I had learned my confidence well; if Eet thought there was a chance the ring might save us, I was willing to try it.

“What will you do?” Hory asked sharply.

Eet answered. “Try to augment your power, Patrolman. We are not sure, we can only try.”

It was thoughtful of him to say “we,” since, as always, I was merely the one to carry out plans hatched in that narrow head of his.

We descended the ladder to the lowest level and made our way to the reactor room. Eet made the same questing movements of nose and head as he had used to steer us through the forest. Then with a quick stretch of his neck, he pointed his nose at a sealed box.

“There, but you must make it fast. Use a weld torch-“

With the air of one humoring madmen, Hory opened a small compartment on the wall and took out the tool Eet had asked for. I brought out the ring slowly. In spite of Eet’s suggestion that we needed its aid, I could not be sure of that. And I had the greatest reluctance to release it to Hory. I had come to trust no one in relation to the stone, which had already left a trail of blood, and blood belonging to those who meant the most to me, across several solar systems.

For a moment I thought Eet was wrong. The stone displayed no signs of life; it was as dead as it had been the first time I saw it. Very much against my will I laid it on top of the box as Eet had ordered.

Then slowly, almost protestingly, it did show life. It did not blaze as it had in space, or even as it had in the underground room, when it had rested near its fellows, bringing them in turn to a glow. That blaze had been blue-white; this was duller, yellow. Hory stared at it, his astonishment so great that he made no attempt to use the welder.

“Affix it - quick!” Eet cried. His whip of tail lashed back and forth on my back as if he would so beat me to the task. I reached for the welder, but Hory roused and touched its tip to the ring metal against the box, joining them firmly.

“Look-“ But Eet was not to finish that warning. Hory struck out with a follow through of the weld rod. By the good grace of whatever power might rule space, the lighted end of that improvised weapon did not hit Eet. But the rod swept him from my shoulder and hurled him to the floor with such force that he lay limp and unmoving.

I was so astounded by the attack that I wasted a precious moment in sheer amazement. When I started for Hory that rod swept up again so that the glowing point menaced my eyes. There was such determination to be read on his face I did not doubt he meant to use it were I to jump him.

So I retreated as he advanced, unable to reach for Eet, for Hory thrust at me when I attempted that. Since the compartment in which we stood was small, my back was swiftly at the wall.

“Why?” I asked. He had me spread there, my hands at shoulder height, palms empty and out, the glowing point of the rod weaving a pattern of threat directly before my eyes.

Hory, the rod in one hand, searched in the front of his tunic. What he produced was a more refined example of the tangler the Guild men had used on him. It flicked out from the tube, not to weave my whole body into a helpless cocoon, but to loop about my wrists, bringing them tightly together.

“Why?” he echoed. “Because I now know who you are. You gave yourself away, or that beast of yours did, when he had you bring out the ring. What happened back there? Could you not agree on the Guild’s terms? We have been tracing you for months, Murdoc Jern.”

“Why? I am no Guildman-“

“Then you are playing a lone hand, which is enough to label you fool. Or do you reckon your beast high enough to support you? You are rather useless without him, are you not?” Hory kicked out and Eet rolled over. I tried desperately to reach him through mind touch, but met nothing. Once before I had believed him dead; now the evidence of my eyes assured me that was true.

“You accuse me of playing some game.” I strove to control my rage; anger can betray a man into foolish error. Perhaps I had not learned the proper submergence of emotions my father had believed necessary to make the superior man, but I had had excellent tutoring and put that to the test now. “What do you mean?”

“You are Murdoc Jern and your father was a notorious Guildman.” Hory used the blazing rod as if I were a child and he were an instructor about to indicate some pertinent point on a wall projection from a reading tape. “If you are not a full member of the Guild, you have access to his connections. Your father was killed for information he had, probably about” - with the rod Hory indicated the ring - that. You were on Angkor when it happened. Then you shipped out, having broken with your family. You were on Tanth when your master Vondar Ustle was killed under circumstances which suggest his death had been arranged. What caused that Jern? Did he discover what you were carrying and plan to inform the authorities? Whatever happened, matters did not go as you expected, did they? You did not walk out free with your master’s private gem stock to back you. But you did get off world.

“The ship you lifted in is suspect as a part-time Guild transport. They dropped you here, didn’t they? And later you fell out with your bosses. You ought to have known you could not stand up to the Guild. Or did you believe that with that beast of yours you could do it? We will get the truth out of you with a reader-helm-“

“When and if you get me to a Patrol base!”

“Oh I think that now there will be no chance of your escaping. You, yourself, obligingly arranged that. But I am forgetting, you are not shipwise, are you? You do not have the ‘feel.’ We have broken free of the traction and are back on course. Now-“ Still facing me with the ready rod, Hory stooped and picked up Eet, a long string of furred body, by the hind legs. “This goes into cold storage. The lab will want to see it. And you shall go into another kind of storage, until you are needed.”

He drove me with his heated rod out of the engine compartment, toward the ladder which led to the upper levels. I backed slowly, trying to see any small chance which might work for me. But even though I might be reckless enough to charge him, he need only with pressure of one finger bring that rod to top heat and lay it across my face to discipline me into obedience.

Eet swung, a pitiful pendulum, from Hory’s hand. I looked at his body and my hate was no longer hot but cold, clear and deadly in me. And because I did look at Eet at that moment I saw my chance. For Eet came to life, twisting up and around to bury needle-sharp teeth in the hand which held him. And as Hory yelled in pain and surprise I charged.

FIFTEEN

Though I could not use my hands (and I would have used them to some purpose, for my father had had me carefully tutored in those forms of unarmed combat which are useful for a space rover), I did use my head and body as a battering ram, striking Hory hard just below his chest, driving him back against the wall. His breath went out of him in a great gasp. But I could not follow up the small advantage as I wanted; I could only strain to hold him helpless with my weight against his body. And it was a stalemate to which I could see no profitable conclusion.

Eet had played a leading role in the initiation of this fight, but I did not expect any more from him. However, he was not to be counted out, as I discovered. His slim body flew through the air, to land on Hory’s bent head, his whip tail lashing my cheek as he passed. He dug in his claws, and caught the Patrolman by the ears as he had me when he steered us away from the cliffs.

Hory screamed and tried to raise his hands to his head, while I wriggled the closer to keep him down and give Eet his chance to win a small victory. Then, regaining some detachment, I backed away, only to charge again, the full force of my shoulder aiming at the base of Hory’s throat. Had I been able to deliver that blow as intended, he might have died.

As it was, he made a crowing noise, and when I stood away, he tried to bring his hands up to his throat. But his knees folded under him and he bowed slowly forward. In fact he might have slipped along the ladder and fallen had I not taken his weight, bracing myself, against my thighs.

Eet loosed his hold, leaving bleeding gashes behind, and whipped down Hory’s body, using his paws to tear open the Patrolman’s tunic and bring forth the tangler. As if he had used one many times before, he turned it on its owner. And in moments Hory was again as neatly packaged as he had been back in the tunnel.

The mutant panted heavily as he drew back on his haunches, holding the tangler between his hand-paws, his attention on the Patrolman. Hory gasped for breath, a dark tinge still in his face. I wondered if my blow had broken some bone, and if I had done worse damage than I had first thought. In spite of the fate he had meant to deal to Eet, and his plans for me, when I had time to think without the heat of rage blinding me, I did not want to kill him. I have killed to defend myself, as I did on Tanth, but never willingly - few men do. And to kill with one’s hands is also another matter. Hory was following orders, with, as he believed, law behind him - though sometimes right and law are not one and the same thing. I respect the Patrol and have a healthy fear of them. But that does not mean I tamely submit to a decree which may not fit with justice. On the frontiers, of necessity, the law must be more flexible than it is on long-settled worlds. And it seemed to me, from what Hory had said, that I had been summarily judged and sentenced without a chance to defend myself.

“Your hands-“ Eet had frisked up the ladder and was now at my shoulder level.

I held out my bound wrists and his sharp teeth made short work of clipping through those strands. Freed, I knelt and settled Hory back against the wall, pressing in and out on his rib carriage until he was breathing less painfully and the dark shade had faded from his face.

“You- can- not- Our- course- is locked-“ he half whispered. “Take us- to- base.”

His satisfaction at that was plain to read. And perhaps be was right. If a course tape had been locked in the auto-pilot, there was nothing we could do to alter it, and our freedom would last just as long as it took us to reach our destination. It would seem that Hory, bound and in our power as he was, still held the victory.

He smiled, perhaps guessing from some change in my expression that I knew that. After all, I was no pilot, and if there was any way of confuting a course tape, I did not know it. Nor, I was sure, did Eet.

“Bring him-“ Eet indicated Hory and the ladder.

“I cannot help you,” Hory said. “Once the tape is locked in - that is that.”

“So?” Eet swung his head, keeping his eyes on a level with Hory’s as I boosted the Patrolman to his feet. “We shall see.”

The mutant’s confidence did not appear to ruffle Hory. However, he did not fight me as I urged him up the ladder. He could have made it nearly impossible to climb; instead, he seemed to do so willingly enough, allowing me to steady him where he could not use his hands. The lesser gravity in the ship was an aid and I made the most of that.

I think Hory was prepared to savor our dismay when we discovered how right he was and that we could do nothing to halt or change the flight of the ship.

To me the control board meant nothing. But Eet sped across the cabin, leaped to Hory’s seat, and from that to the edge of the panel, his head flicking from right to left and back again as if he were searching. Whatever he sought he did not find. Instead he drew back again to the seat, hunching up, his neck pulled in to his body, his eyes staring. His mind was tightly closed, but I knew he was thinking.

Hory laughed. “Your superbeast is baffled, Jern. I told you - make your submission and-“

“Trust the Patrol?” I asked. Perhaps I had come to depend too much on the near-miracles which Eet had achieved. It certainly looked as if Hory was right and we were his prisoners, instead of the situation being reversed.

“Full cooperation will mitigate your sentence,” he returned.

“I have not been tried, or sentenced, yet,” I parried. “And your charges, or those you stated, are very vague. I inherited the ring from my father. I defended myself from a quite unpleasant death on Tanth, and I paid my own passage off that misformed planet. You yourself saw that I was not cooperating with the Guild back there. So - of just what am I guilty? It seems to me that I have in fact been cooperating with the Patrol, in your person, right along - seeing as how Eet got us away from that tunnel and my ring broke the traction beam-“

Hory still smiled and there was nothing friendly in that stretching of lips. “When you were on Tanth, Jern, did you ever hear the folksaying they have -‘He who does a demon a service is thereby a demon’s servant’? What you have in that ring, if it is what rumor claims it to be, is not for the owning of any one man. We have our orders to destroy it and its owner - if that seems necessary.

“So going beyond the law?”

“There are times when the law must be broken if the race or species is to survive-“

“Now that,” Eet’s voice rang in our heads, “is a dangerous concept. Either the law exists, or it does not. Murdoc believes that on some occasions the law can be bent, or bypassed for the protection of what seems to be right. And you, Hory, who are pledged to the upholding of the strict letter of the law, now say that it can be broken because of expediency. It would seem that the laws of your species are not held in high respect.”

“What do you-“ Hory turned on Eet a blast of hate which even I could feel. I moved quickly between him and the furred body now in the pilot’s seat.

“What do I, an animal, know about the affairs of humans?” Eet finished for him. “Only what I learn from your thoughts. You do not want to deem me more than beast, do you, Hory? Now I wonder what there is within you that holds you to that point of view, even though you know it is wrong. Or is it all a part of not wishing to admit that you can be wrong in other ways also? You seem to put”- Eet paused to survey the Patrolman closely - “an extraordinary valuation of your own actions.”

Hory’s face flushed; his lips were tight-set. I wished at that moment I could read his thoughts as well as Eet did. If Eet found them threatening, he did not comment on that, but now struck off on another track.

“If my species is to survive, and I think that a necessary thing, steps must be taken here and now. You are probably right, Hory, in believing that this ship cannot be turned from its present course. But are you so sure that that cannot be reversed?”

I saw the startled expression on Hory’s face. His mind must have been easy for Eet to read.

“Thank you.” Satisfaction was plain in Eet’s reply. “So that is the way of it!” He leaped again to the edge of the control board and flexed his hand-paws over its surface as one might do preparatory to making some delicate and demanding adjustments on a complicated piece of machinery.

“No!” Hory lunged for him, but he came up against me and did not reach the board. I struck once with the edge of my hand, one of the tricks of personal combat which I had been taught. He went down and out an instant after the blow landed.

I dragged him to the passenger’s seat, heaved him up, and buckled him in. Then I turned back to Eet, who was still studying the board, his head darting from side to side, his paws above but not yet touching any of the buttons or levers.

“A pretty problem,” he observed. “The result will be complicated by the booster power of the stone. It can be reversed, yes. I read that in his mind when I startled him by such a suggestion. Such a shock will often uncover necessary information. But at our present speed, we shall probably not land near where we took off.”

“And what can we gain by returning? Oh,” I said, answering my own question, “we cannot alter course until we land again. But I am no pilot. I cannot lift this ship off planet even if we are able to set a second course.”

“A fact to consider later, when the time comes to put it to test,” was Eet’s comment. “But have you any wish to continue this present voyage under the circumstances?”

“What about the Guild ship? It could be on our trail again if we return-“

“Consider the facts - will they be expecting our return? I do not believe that anyone, even someone as shrewd as Captain Nactitl, might foresee that. And if we can set down some distance from their camp, we shall win time. Time is the weapon we need most.”

Eet was right, as he always was: I did not want to finish out the voyage on Hory’s tape. Even if I were not already under charges, taking over this ship would place me so deeply in the ill graces of the Patrol that I could have small defense.

“Thus and thus and thus-“ Having completed his study of the board, Eet made his choices with lightning rapidity. And I was not shipwise enough to know if he had chosen successfully. I watched lights change, fade, others take their places, and hoped fervently that Eet knew what he was doing.

“Now what?” I asked as he scrambled from the edge of the board back into the pilot’s seat.

“Since we have only waiting left, I would suggest food - drink-“

He was so right. Now that he mentioned it, the E-ration I had consumed in the tunnel was long behind me and I had nothing but an aching and empty void for a middle. I inspected Hory’s lashings. He was still unconscious, but his breathing was regular. Then I went below, accompanied by Eet, who could take the ladder with far more speed than I could. We found a small galley with - to me - a luxurious supply of rations, and had a feast. At that moment it was equal to a Llalation banquet and I savored every mouthful with relish.

Eet shared my food, even if it were not the end product of a hunt. It was when we were both full that I turned again to consider the future.

“I cannot pilot us off world,” I said again. “We may be planet-bound on a world which certainly would not be my choice to colonize. If the Guild ship follows us in, they will be able to mark our landing and will be after us. And I do not know enough about this ship to use its weapons. Though I suppose, if it is a matter of his destruction, we could trust Hory enough to man the defenses, whatever they may be.”

“Especially, you are thinking, since I can keep reading his mind and will be alert for the moment when he may try to turn those same weapons against us.” Eet carefully washed each finger with a dark-red tongue, holding it well out from its fellows to be lapped around. “They will not be expecting us. As for getting off world again, that will come in due time. Do not seek out shadows in the future; you will discover oftentimes that the sun of tomorrow will dispatch them. I would suggest sleep now. That eases the body, rests the brain, and one awakes better prepared to face the inevitable.”

He jumped from the swing table and pattered to the door.

“This way - to a bunk-“ Pointing with his nose, he indicated a door directly across the level landing. “Do not worry - there is an alarm which will rouse you when we do enter atmosphere once more.”

I pushed the door aside. There was a bunk and I threw myself on it, suddenly as tired as I had been hungry. I felt Eet leap to my side and curl up with his head on my shoulder. But his mind was sealed and his eyes closed. There was nothing to do but yield to the demands of my overtired body and follow him into slumber.

I was jerked out of that blissful state by a strident buzzing far too close to my ear. When I looked blearily around I saw Eet sitting up, combing his whiskers between his fingers.

“Re-entry alarm,” he informed me.

“Are you sure?” I sat up on the bunk and ran my hands through my hair, but not with the neat results of Eet’s personal grooming. It had been far too long since I had had a change of clothing, a bath, a chance to feel really clean. On my hands and body, the pink patches of new skin were fading. It should not be long before my piebald state was past and I would bear none of the stigma of the disease which had taken me from the Vestris.

“Back where we started from, yes.” Eet did sound sure, though I could not share his complete confidence, and would not until I was able to look outside.

“Might as well strap down right here,” he continued.

“But the ship-“

“Is on full automatic. And what could you do if it were not?”

Eet was right, but I would have felt less shaky had Hory been riding in the pilot’s seat. It is very true that the autopilots have been refined and refined until they probably are more reliable than humans. But there is always the unusual emergency when a human reflex may save what a machine cannot. And, though the engines of a space ship practically run themselves, no ship ever lifts without pilot, engineer, and those other crewmen whose duties in the past once kept their hands ever hovering over controls.

“You fear your machines, do you not?” As I buckled down on the bunk Eet stretched out beside me. He seemed prepared to carry on a conversation at a time when I was in no mood for light talk.

“Why, I suppose some of us do. I am no techneer. Machines are mysteries as far as I am concerned.” Too much of a mystery. I wished I had had some instruction in spacing.

But my thoughts and Eet’s answer, if he made one, were blanked out in the discomfort of orbiting before planet-fall. And I found that to be twice as great as what I had experienced before. My estimation of Hory arose. If he had constantly to take this sort of thing he was indeed tough. My last stab of fear concerned our actual touch-down. What if the automatic controls did not pick a suitable spot on which to fin in and we were swallowed up in some lake, or tipped over at set-down. Not that there was one thing I could do to prevent either that or any other catastrophe which might arise.

Then I opened my eyes, with the thumping pain of a sun-sized headache behind them, felt the grip of planetside gravity, and knew that we had made it. Since the floor of the cabin appeared to be level, we had had a suitable landing, too.

Eet crawled out from beneath the strap which had gone across my chest and his body. His quick recovery from the strains which always held me in thrall was irritating. I had thought him dead after that violent blow he had taken from the rod. But from the time he had turned to bite the hand which held him, he had shown no sign of nursing even a bruise.

“-see where we are-“ He was already going out the cabin door. And in the silent ship I could hear the scraping of his claws as he climbed the ladder. I followed at a far more moderate pace, stopping on the way to pick up a tube of restorative from the rack in the gallery. Hory would need that and we would need him - at least until we learned more about where we were and what might be ahead of us.

The Patrolman’s eyes were open, fixed on Eet in a stare which suggested he did not in the least want to see the mutant. And Eet was in Hory’s lawful place, the pilot’s seat. For the first time since I had known him, my companion appeared truly baffled.

As always the control board was rigged with an outside visa-screen. But the button which activated that was now well above Eet’s reach, meant to be close to the hand of a human pilot reclining in that swing chair.

Eet had scrambled up as high as he could climb, his neck stretched to an amazing length. But his nose was still not within touching distance of that button. I crossed over to push it.

The screen produced a picture. We seemed to be facing a cliff - and it was too close to have reassured me had I seen it before we landed. Insofar as I could compare it in memory, it was of the same yellow-gray shade as that which had been tunneled by the long-ago miners. But this had no breaks in its surface.

For the first time Hory spoke. “Put on the sweep - that lever there.” Bound as he was, he had to indicate with his chin, using it as a pointer. I dutifully pressed that second button.

The cliff face now appeared to travel past us at a slow rate. Then we saw what must lie to the left, open sky with only the tops of greenery showing.

“Depress,” ordered Hory almost savagely. “Depress the lever. We want ground level.”

There was almost a sensation of falling as our field of vision descended rapidly. The tops of the growth became visible as the crowns of large bushes. There was the usual smoke and fumes left by the deter rockets, a strip of seared ground between the ship and that shriveled wall of green. Nowhere did I see the giant trees which had caught the LB in for the forest.

Neither were there any ruins, nor the wreckage of the ancient ship, nor, what I had dreaded the most, the spire of the Guild vessel. As the visa-screen continued to reveal the land about us, it looked very much as if we were in a wilderness. And how far we were from the mining camp was anyone’s guess.

“Not too far.” Eet climbed up on the webbing to watch the sweep across the countryside. “There are ways of locating a ship, especially on a planet where there is no interference in the way of ordinary electronic broadcasting. He has already thought of that-“ The mutant indicated Hory.

I turned to the Patrolman. “What about it? We are back on that planet, I know this vegetation. Can you discover the Guild ship or camp for us?”

“Why should I?” He was not struggling against his bonds, but lying at his ease, as if action was no concern of his. “Why should I put myself into your friends’ hands? You have a problem now, have you not, Jern? Take off on the tape set in the autopilot and you will reach my base. Stay here - and sooner or later your friends will come. Then you had better try to make a deal. Perhaps you can use me as a bargaining point.”

“You have given me little reason to want to do anything else,” I retorted. “But those are not my friends, and I am not about to make any bargain with them.” Almost I was tempted to let him believe that his supposition was the truth. But why play murky games when I might well need his cooperation in the future? The ship would take off on a tape, without the need for a human pilot. But whether he had a supply of such tapes on board, whether I could affix and use another, whether I could be sure my choice would not merely take me to another Patrol post, that I must find out. And time to learn might be running out - they might already be tracing us.

I - we - needed Hory, yet we must not make too much of that need lest he play upon it. So I had to convince him that we must cooperate, if only for a short period of truce.

“Do you know what they hunt back there?” I tried a different track.

“It is easy enough to guess. They try to find where those stones were mined.”

“Which-“ I said slowly, “Eet has discovered, though they have not.”

I feared some denial from Eet, but he made no attempt at communication. The mutant was still watching the screen as if the picture on it was the most important thing in the world. I was feeling my way, but it heartened me a little that he had not promptly protested my assertion concerning his knowledge.

“Where is it then-?”

Hory must have known I would not answer that. The screen now showed a wider break in the growth. Beyond the ground our descent had scorched was a slope of yellow sand, of so bright and sharp a color as I had not seen elsewhere on this dusky world. That provided a beach for a lake. The water here was not slime-ringed, murky, and suggestive of evil below its surface; it had not been born of any dying flood. This was as brightly green as the sand was yellow, so vividly colored both they might have been gems set in dingy metal.

“It is the nature of these stones” - I made a lecture of my explanation, supplying nuggets of truth in a vast muffling of words - “that they seek their own kind. One can actually draw you to another. If you will yield to the pull of the one you have. Eet took the ring just before the Guild ship landed. We had been following such a pull, and he continued to follow it. He found the source of the attraction-“

Eet gave no sign he heard my words. He was still watching the screen in complete absorption. Suddenly he made one of the few vocal sounds I had ever heard from him. His lips parted to show his teeth, cruelly sharp, and he was hissing. Startled, I looked at the view on the visa-plate.

SIXTEEN

The viewer swept on. What we now saw must be on the other side of the ship. And if the rest of the landscape had been free of any signs that intelligence had ever been there, that was now changed.

An arm of the lake made a narrow inlet. Set in the middle of that was a platform of stone blocks. It was ringed by a low parapet, on which stood stone pillars in the form of heads. Each differed from its fellows so much as to suggest that if they did not resemble imagined gods, they had been fashioned to portray very unlike species. But the oddest thing was not their general appearance, but that from those set at the four corners there curled trails of greenish smoke, almost the shade of the water washing below. It would seem that those heads were hollow and housed fires.

Yet, save for that smoke, there was no sign of any life on the stone surface of the platform. We could see most of it, and unless someone crawled belly-flat below that low parapet, the place was deserted. Eet continued to hiss, his back fur rising in a ridge from nape to root of tail.

I studied those heads, trying to discover in any one of them some small resemblance to something I had seen before on any of the worlds I had visited. And, in the fourth from the nearest smoking one, I thought that I did.

“Deenal!” I must have spoken that word aloud as I recalled the museum on Iona where Vondar had been invited to a private showing of a treasure from remote space. There had been a massive armlet, too large to fit any human arm, and it had borne such a face in high relief. Old, from one of the prehuman space civilizations, named for a legend retold by the Zacathans - that was Deenal. And about it we knew very little indeed.

Yet that was the only one - I counted the heads - out of twelve that I had any clue to. And each undoubtedly represented a different race. Was this a monument to some long-vanished confederation or empire in which many species and races had been united?

We have nonhuman (as we reckon “human”) allies and partners, too. There are the reptilian Zacathans, the avian-evolved Trystians, the strange Wyverns, others - a score of them. One or two are deadly strangers with whom our kind has only wary contact. And among those aliens who are seemingly humanoid, there are many divisions and mutations. A man in a lifetime of roving may not even see or hear of them all.

But Eet’s reaction to this place was so astounding (his hissing signs of hostility continued), that I asked:

“What is it? That smoke - is there someone there?”

Eet voiced a last hiss. Then he shook his head, almost as if he were coming out of a state of deep preoccupation.

“Storrff-“

It was no sound, nor any word I recognized. Then he corrected himself hurriedly, as if afraid he might have been revealing too much in shock.

“It does not matter. This is an old dead place, of no value-“ He could have been reassuring himself more than us.

“The smoke.” I brought him back to the important point.

“The sniffers - they take what they do not understand to make of it a new god cult.” He appeared sure of that. “They must have fled when we landed.”

“Storrff-“ Hory voiced that word which Eet had planted in our minds. “Who or what is Storrff?”

But Eet had himself under complete control. “Nothing which has mattered for some thousands of your planet years. This is a place long dead and forgotten.”

But not to you, I thought. Since he did not answer that, I knew it was another of those subjects which he refused to discuss. And the mystery of Eet deepened by a fraction more. Whether the Storrff were represented by one of those heads, or whether this place itself was Storrff, he was not going to explain. But I knew that he recognized it or some part of it, and not pleasantly.

Already the screen was sliding past, returning to our first view of the cliff wall. Eet climbed down the webbing.

“The ring-“ He was making for the ladder.

“Why?”

But it seemed that was another subject on which he was not going to be too informative. I turned back to Hory with the restorative. I broke off its cap and held it to his mouth while he sucked deeply at its contents. Must we keep him prisoner? Perhaps for the time being. When he had finished I left him tied in the seat to follow Eet.

The ring was no longer affixed to the top of the box. There was a spot of raw metal where it had been. Eet stood at the wall on the other side of the cabin, his forefeet braced against that surface, staring up at a spot too far above his head for him to reach.

There clung the ring as tightly as if welded. But it was not a cementing of the band which held it so. Instead the stone was tight to the metal. And when I tried to loosen it, I had to exert all my strength to pull it free of the surface. All the while it blazed.

“That platform in the inlet-“ I spoke my thought aloud.

“Just so.” Eet climbed up me. “And let us now see where and why.”

I stopped by the arms rack inside the hatch, the ring, in my palm, jerking my left arm across my body at a painful angle. A laser in my hand would give me more confidence than I had felt earlier.

The ramp cranked out and down and we exited into bright sunlight, my hand pulled away from me. The charred ground was hot under my lightly-covered feet, so that I leaped across it. At the foot of the cliff I turned toward the inlet, allowing the ring to pull me.

“Not a cliff mine.” I still wondered about that.

“The stone is not from this world.” Eet was positive. “But - there is that out there” - he indicated the platform - “which has more draw than the cache in the ruins. Look at the ring!”

Even in the sunlight its fire blazed. And the heat from it was enough to burn my hand, growing ever more uncomfortable, though I dared not loose my hold on it lest it indeed fly through the air, not to be found again.

I plowed through sand which engulfed my feet above the ankles. It was a thin, powdery stuff into which I sank in a way I did not like. Then I came to the water’s edge. In spite of its brilliant color, it was not transparent, but opaque, and I had no idea of its depth. The ring actually jerked me forward and I had to fight against wading in. Nor could I see any way of climbing up to the platform, since it would be well above the head of one in the water and there was no break in its wall.

Had I followed the pull instead of fighting it until I wavered back and forth on the bank, I might have fallen straight into one of the traps of this planet. Only the trap became impatient and reached for me. The emerald surface broke in a great shower of water, and a head which was three-quarters mouth gaped in a hideous display of fangs and avid hunger.

I thumbed the laser as I stumbled back into the thick sand. The beam shot straight into that exposed maw, and the creature turned and twisted frenziedly though it uttered no cry. It was armored in thick scales and, I believed, by chance alone, I had struck its most vulnerable point. Around it the water was beaten into green froth by its struggles and it was still writhing as it sank. Then it arose partly to the surface, drifting from between me and the platform.

Moments later the body began to jerk from side to side and I caught dim glimpses of things which tore at it, devouring the eater in turn. But I was duly warned against trying to cross that strip of inlet, narrow as it was.

“The sniffers-“ I remembered Eet’s report. “If they use this as a temple, how do they reach it?” Of course they could be immune to the water lurkers, but that I did not accept too readily.

“We have not seen the other side,” Eet returned. “We might do well to explore in that direction.”

The pull of the ring was a force against which I had continually to fight as I walked along the beach, first paralleling the platform and then away from it. When we reached the end of the water and I could see the other side, Eet was proven right as he had been so many times before.

Lying on the sand was a collection of saplings and poles, tied and woven together with twisted ropes. Properly moved into place, it could span between beach and platform, though it would then be at a sharp slope.

The ring pulled me on, and it seemed to me that its tug was stronger, as if it grew impatient, redoubling its demand on me. I found myself running, or trying to run, through the sand, though it was hard to keep my feet, my left hand, holding the ring so tightly my fingers cramped, straight out, across my body, pointing to the platform.

When I reached the bridge I was caught in a dilemma. To let go of the ring, to holster the laser, both actions might mean disaster. Yet I was not sure I could shift the bridge without using both hands and all my strength. The wood lengths from which it had been made were bleached white and might be lighter than they looked - but-

Carefully, fighting until I was sweating as if I had been in another brawl with Hory, I forced the ring back to my chest, unsealed a slip of the coverall, and clapped the band inside. Within my clothing it pushed out the fabric, but that was tough and would hold.

The laser went into my belt, and I hurried to deal with the bridge. It was unwieldy, but my hopes that it was light were realized. I got it up and swung it around, so that the other end dropped on the top of the wall. And I had no sooner done that than the seal on the breast of my coverall burst open. Not the fabric, but the fastener had yielded to the struggling of the ring.

My grab missed the band. With the stone flashing in triumph, it flew out toward the platform. Now I must follow.

I made that trip on my hands and knees, Eet running as a dark streak ahead. And I felt particularly vulnerable as I climbed. For the span swung alarmingly under my weight and I thought that at any moment it would slide from its hold on the upper wall and hurl me into the water.

There was also the possibility that the sniffers might return. And I had no wish to conduct a running battle up or down this very precarious passage. But at last I was able to put out a hand and rest it on solid and unyielding stone, pull myself to the dubious safety of the wall, and then jump to the platform.

The smoke from the nearest head trailed about me, and I sneezed at its odor. Then I thought, for a second or two, that there was a fifth fire lit in the center of the platform, though this did not smoke. Eet was warily circling that blaze - which was no fire after all, but the stone, in such furious display of energy as I had never seen.

“Keep off!” Eet’s warning stopped me. “It is too hot to handle. It is trying to reach what calls it so strongly. And it will either destroy itself now, or reach that which it seeks. But it is beyond our control.”

I knelt to see the better. Beyond our control? It had always been that. We had set it to our service in the ship, but how easily it had broken free. And all other times we - or I - had obeyed it and not it me.

Eet was right. The warmth that came from it was now a seething furnace heat. There was a raw radiance which hurt my eyes, a thrust of heat that drove me back and back, until I crouched against the wall beneath one of the smoking heads.

The mutant was probably right in believing that this unendurable burst of energy fought to destroy the stone, burn it to one of those cinders. But if it sought death, it was going in a blaze of glory.

I had to shield not only my eyes but my face against the fury. Eet was not with me. I hoped he was safe on the other side of that inferno.

“Just so,” he let me know. “It is still trying to cut through.”

I did not try to witness the struggle. The bursting light would have blinded me. Even though I shut my eyes, held my hands tightly across them, and turned my face to the wall, I could feel the effects of the holocaust. Could I bear it much longer? If the heat increased I might be seriously burned, or forced into the lake. Between one fate and the other there was little choice. Then - that lashing heat was gone! The stone had died-

Pushing around, I got to my feet. I did not take my hands from my face and open my eyes until I stood upright. Then I looked away, dreading to face what must lie in front of me.

When I did, I fully expected to see a charred cinder. But what was there was an opening in the platform, a perfect square, as if some door had been burned away. And the light from below was not exactly faded, but was pulsating in a less strident and eye-destroying way.

Eet had already reached the hole. I saw his head shoot out and down as he stretched his neck to its greatest extent to view what lay there. But I went more cautiously, testing each block I stepped upon. That hole bore a likeness to a trap door and I had no wish to be caught in such.

The surface seemed solid enough, and with a couple of hesitant strides I joined my companion to look into the interior. The glowing stone lay on a coffer such as the one we had seen in the derelict ship. But the stones in this were very much alive, more so even than those in the cache of the ruins. And their light, coming through a slit, gave us an excellent view of the vault.

It would seem that the platform was only the outer shell of a room, perhaps a storeroom like that of the ruins. There were many boxes in orderly piles along its walls, and none of them had been affected by time. All were tightly sealed, showing not even hair-thin marks of an opening.

Only after I had studied them for a long moment did their general size and shape make me uneasy. There was something about them - long, narrow, not too deep. What was it-?

“Can you not see?” asked Eet. “These did not give their dead to the fire; they hid them away in boxes, as if they could lock them from the earth and the changes of time!” His contempt was cold.

“But those stones - if this is a tomb, why leave the stones here?”

“Do not many races bury treasures with their dead, that those no longer with them may carry into the Final Dark what they esteemed most in the days of their strength?”

“Primitive peoples, yes,” I conceded. But that a race which had achieved space flight would do so - no. And now I noted something else. While many of those boxes did bear too close a resemblence to coffins to dismiss Eet’s explanation as fantasy, there were others of different dimensions.

Eet interrupted my thoughts. “Look about you!” His head shot up and turned from side to side, the nose pointing at those rows of heads. “Different species, perhaps different shapes for bodies. This was a composite tomb, made to hold more than one people-“

“Yet all following a single burial ceremony?” I countered. For even among the same species there are different modes of paying honor and bidding farewell to the dead. And to find one vault holding so many burials, seemingly united-

“It might be so,” Eet answered. “Let us assume that a composite garrison, even a single ship’s company, were marooned here. That there was no chance for their eventual return home. Yet, they would hope that in the future there might come those to seek out their final resting place.”

My mind took an imaginative leap. “And the stones were then left as payment for their return to their proper worlds, or for the type of funeral they desired?”

“Just so. Those would do as burial fees.”

How long had they waited? Did the worlds which had given them birth still exist? Or did these planets now lie barren under dying suns half the galaxy away? Why had the builders of this place remained here? Had their empire broken apart in some vast and sudden war? Had the relief ships never come? Had the ship fallen at the ruins been their last hope, destroyed before their eyes in some mechanical or natural catastrophe? And the derelict we had found drifting - had that been a relief ship they had awaited? When it did not arrive had they surrendered to the fact of no escape and built this vault to tell their story to the future?

I glanced from wall to wall of that tomb. There was no message left there for our reading. Then I looked once more at the heads of the parapet. These, seen close up, were eroded to some extent, but they had not been as badly aged as the ruins by the cliff. Were they the actual portraits of those resting below, or did they only represent types of races?

Six were definitely nonhuman. Of those, one, I believed, was insectile, at least two vaguely reptilian, one batrachian. The rest were humanoid enough to pass as kin to my own species. Two were as manlike as the space rovers of my own day. There were twelve of them - but what had brought such a mixture to this planet?

I turned to Eet. “This must be the source of the stones - and these came to mine them.”

“Leaving the galleries picked so clean? That ring did not lead to them. I do not believe that could be true. This may have been a way station for such a shipment. Or it may have had a purpose we cannot conceive of now. But - the fact remains that we do have here a cache of live stones. Enough, as that Patrolman would point out, probably to disrupt the economy of any government. The man or men who take that box and are able to hold it will rule space - for as long as they can keep the stones.”

I came back to the vault opening. “The light- it is beginning to die. Perhaps the stones are also-“ It was decidedly less light in the crypt.

Eet crossed the platform in a couple of his bounds, leaping now to the parapet. Only for a second did he so face the ship, his whole stance suggesting he was alert to what I could neither see nor hear. Then he was back at the same speed.

“Down!” He dashed against me, his impetus striking me almost waist-high. “Down!”

I did drop, my feet going over the edge of the opening. Then I swung by my hands and landed with a jar on the floor, scraping against the side of the box which held the stones. Though the light they emitted was now no more than a small and flickering fire, it was enough to show me safe footing.

I glanced up just in time to see a spear of light flash across the opening, hardly above the level of the parapet. Laser - but not a hand one! That was from the barrel of a cutter, and it must have been fired from the ship!

Eet climbed a pile of those boxes. He was crouched now well away from the hole, yet near the wall facing the ship, his head laid to the stone blocks as if through them he could still hear something.

I put my hand on the ring. There was warmth in it, and a gleam to the stone, but as far as I could see, it no longer threatened any would-be wearer. And, to my surprise, it did not adhere to the box, but came away easily. For safekeeping I put it into the front of my coverall, making sure the seam was tightly sealed.

Again I looked to Eet. The glow was further reduced, but not entirely gone. I could see him well enough.

“Hory?” I asked.

“Just so. It would seem he had resources we did not know about. Somehow he loosed himself. He has now tried to kill us and failed, so he will search for another and more effective form of attack.”

“Go off world-bring in the Patrol?”

“Not yet. We have hurt his pride sorely by what we have done to him. There was more to his being here, I believe, than we - or I - first read in his mind. He may have had an inner shield. Also, he believes if we are left here we shall of necessity join forces with the Guild and perhaps be beyond reach before he can return. No, he wants the ring - and our deaths - before he goes.”

“Well, we may not be dead - but how will we get out of here?” To try to climb again to the platform would expose us to Hory’s beam. He need only wait; time was now on his side.

“Not altogether,” Eet informed me. “If the Guild left men here, and we can safely conclude that they did, they will have monitored our planeting. And they will send to see who landed. Remember, they picked up Hory the first time. Almost too easily. Now I wonder why.”

I brushed aside Eet’s speculations about the past. “We may be half a continent away from their camp.”

“But they must have some form of small aircraft. It would be necessary for their explorations. Yes, they will come - and I do not think we are as far from their base as you suggest. The ruins were once part of a settlement of some size. This tomb would not be located too distant from that.”

“Always supposing it is a tomb. So we have to sit here and wait for the Guild to come after Hory. But how will we be any better off then?”

“We shall not, if we do so wait,” Eet answered calmly.

“Then how do we get out - just by wishing?” I asked. “If we top that hole, he burns me - though you might be able to make it”

Eet still held his listening position against the wall. “Just so. An interesting problem, is it not?”

“Interesting!” I curbed my temper. I could think of several things to call the present situation, all of them more forceful than “interesting.”

SEVENTEEN

My hand kept returning to the ring beneath my coverall. It had led us on a wild chase, probably to our deaths - where we would lie in company. I glanced around the vault. The light was low, and shadows crept toward us from the rows of ominous boxes. Behind those was only the heavy masonry of the walls. Even if we were able to cut through on the opposite side from the ship so that Hory might not sight our going, we would still have the water to cross.

The ring. It had saved me and Eet before, though perhaps that was only incidental to its seeking for its kind. Could it do anything to get us out of here? Hory wanted it - wanted it badly

I glanced at Eet, who was now a barely discernible blot against the wall.

“Could you reach Hory’s mind from this distance?”

“If there was a reason - I think so. His has - at least on the surface - a relatively simple pattern - like yours.”

“How much influence could you bring to bear on him under contact?”

“Very little. Such a tie needs cooperation to be successful. The Patrolman does not trust me, nor would he open his mind to me now. It would be necessary to break down active resistance. I coud not hold him in any thrall.”

“But - you could me?” I did not know just what I fished for. I was one feeling his way through the dark by touch alone. If I chose rightly it meant life; if I failed - well - we might not be worse off than at present.

“If you surrendered your full will. But that is not in you. There is a stubborn core in your species which would resist any take-over. Whether you wished to cooperate or not, I would have a struggle on my hands.”

“But Hory does not know that. All he knows is that you communicate mentally. He knows, though he will not admit it, that you are not an animal. Suppose he were led to believe that you have been controlling me all along, that I am only hands and feet to serve you. Suppose I acted that part now, got out there saying you were dead, I was free and wanted nothing more than to get back with him - bringing the ring?”

“And just how are you going to make that clear to him?” Eet inquired. He left the wall, flowed over the boxes to hunch before me, his eyes level with mine. “If you emerge on the platform he will burn you instantly.”

“Can you die spectacularly in a way he can see?” I countered.

There was amusement rather than any direct answer. “Clutching my throat and flopping about?” he asked after a moment. “But with a laser you cannot perform so. I would be scorched fur and a dead body instantly. However, always supposing we could convince Hory I had made my exit permanently - what then?”

“I would emerge, dazed, cowed, ready to be taken prisoner-“

“While I would later come to your rescue? Do you remember that we played somewhat similar roles before? No, I do not believe Hory is so gullible. Do not underestimate him. He may be more than he seems.”

“What do you mean?”

“I believe he has a mind shield - that I have read only surface thoughts - perhaps what he was programed to reveal. Did not you yourself once say ‘Do not underrate your opponents’? However, your suggestion has some points worth considering. Suppose you were the one to meet his laser beam?”

“But - he hates you. Would be treat with you?”

“Just so - a question. However, there is an implanted feeling in your race that size and superior muscularity count much. Hory hates me as a freak, a thing which belies his superiority. Therefore, he must deal with me - for his own emotional satisfaction - not by a flash of fire, but rather by delivering me to his superiors in triumph. So far we have bested him and that rankles. I wish we knew more.” Eet hesitated. “He is a puzzle. And he is also intelligent enough to know that time is his enemy. Do you think he has not already figured out a Guild detachment may be on its way here?

“But they could not shake him out of his ship. Only - he needs the ring as a booster to take off. He wants the ring, and he would like me - you are merely incidental.”

“Thank you!” But Eet’s dissection of the problem was not irritating - it was true. “So I die-“

“As conspicuously as possible. I will then endeavor to take over the noble mind of Hory, promising him the sun, any vagrant moon, and, of course, the stars, all via the help of the ring. I think he will use a stun beam on me-“

“But-“

“Oh, I do not think that weapon will be as effective as he thinks it is. I shall be transported to the ship, doubtless installed in a cage, and Hory will see his way clear to departing.”

“Leaving me here? How-“

Again amusement from Eet. “I said I could not control Hory without his assistance. But there is one time when that assistance, unconsciously, may be mine for a short period. When he thinks I am totally in his power, he will then, by our hope, relax his guard. I do not need to advise you that period will be short. I am his shocked and docile prisoner, you are dead. He has full control-“

“And if the stunner really works on you?”

“Do you want to await death here?” Eet countered. “What one can say this or that sore stroke will not fall on his shoulders, aimed by the strong arm of fortune? Do you wish to sit here waiting for the Guild, or perhaps for Hory to switch on whatever heavy armament his ship affords and burn us to the bare rocks, setting even those to bubbling around our roasted ears? What I have learned of your minds suggests I have a good chance for what I propose to do. Esper powers are not used much and to mechanical devices such as cages there are always keys.”

Perhaps my partnership with Eet had made me particularly susceptible to his self-confidence, or perhaps I merely wanted to believe that his plan could work because I could not turn up a better. But I made tacit agreement when I asked:

“And how do I die by laser beam without being crisped in the process? That is a weapon one does not dodge, or survive. And Hory will not be aiming over my head, or any place except where it will do him the most good and me the least!”

It was now twilight in the vault and I could see Eet but not too clearly. If he had a plausible answer I was willing to agree that in this partnership he was the senior.

“I can give you five, perhaps ten heartbeats-“ he answered slowly.

“To do what? Act as if I were going to jump in the lake? And how-“

“I can expend a little power over Hory, confusing his sight. He will aim at what he thinks is his target. But that will not be you.”

“Are you sure?” My skin crawled. Death by fire is something no one of my kind faces with equanimity.

“I am sure.”

“What if he comes to view the remains?”

“I can again confuse his sight - for a short period.” After a long moment’s pause he spoke more briskly: “Now - we make sure of a future bargaining point-“

“Bargaining point?” My imagination was still occupied with several unpleasant possible future happenings.

“The cache of stones here. I do not think that without the ring they will be visible.”

“The ring.” I took it out. “You will take the ring, and leave the stones here as bait to draw him back?”

Eet appeared to consider that. “If he had more time perhaps. But I think not now. Give me the ring. These - we do not want them in sight, if and when he comes to pick me up.”

It was my muscle which dragged the box from below the opening and concealed it back behind one of the rows of coffins.

“Now!” Eet sat on a box. “He will not fire until you are out in the open, making a dash for the parapet. The laser may beam close enough so that you will feel its heat. The rest is up to you.”

My good sense belabored me as I climbed up, reached out to grasp the edges of the opening. If- if- and if again-

Eet popped out, running, heading for the parapet. I had only an instant and then I fell, a searing, biting pain along my side - a pain so intense that I was aware of nothing else for a second. I could smell my clothes smoldering. Then Eet was back with me, pulling at my coverall as if to urge me up and on, though in reality putting out those lickings of fire.

His mind was closed to me, and I knew he was on the defensive, waiting for a second attack from our common enemy. Suddenly he stiffened, fell over, and lay still, though his eyes were open and I could see the fluttering of his breathing along his side. Hory had used a stunner even as Eet had foreseen, but how effectively? And I could not query Eet as to that.

Around one of his forelegs was the ring. Perhaps his pawing at my smoldering clothing might have been translated by the watcher into a hunt for that. Now we lay still, I belly down, my head turned toward Eet, he flattened out, his legs stiff. Where was Hory?

It seemed to me that we lay there for hours. Since we must be under observation from the ship, there was no chance to move. I had gone down at the touch of that searing beam, not in a planned fall, and my right leg, half doubled under my body, began to cramp. I would be in ho shape to carry on battle should Hory decide I was not safely dead. In fact he would be a fool not to crisp us now as we lay.

Except that Eet was sure the Patrolman wanted him. And he had contrived to collapse so close to me that now a sweeping beam aimed from the ship could not remove one of us without killing the other into the bargain.

I could not raise my head to watch the shore line or the span, both hidden by the parapet. Winged things came out of nowhere to buzz about us, crawl across my flesh. And I had to lie and take their attention with no show of life. In that period it was driven home to me again that a man’s hardest ordeal is waiting.

Then I heard a crackling. Someone, or something, was climbing the span from the shore, the frail structure creaking and crackling under the weight. A many-legged thing crawled across my cheek and I shrank from its touch, so that it seemed my very skin must shrivel

My field of vision was so limited! I was not even facing the direction where booted feet would be visible as they crossed the parapet. I heard the metallic click of the sole plates of space footgear on the stone.

Now - would Hory finish the job by simply turning a hand laser on me? Or would the illusion Eet promised hold long enough to deceive him? Perhaps Eet was truly stunned, unable to provide such cover.

Those few moments were the longest of my life. I think had I come out of them with the touch of old age upon me I would not have been surprised.

The boots came into my restricted line of vision. The crawling thing on my face now rested across my nose. A hand reached down and I saw the sleeve of a uniform. Fingers closed on Eet, swung him aloft out of my sight. I waited for a burning flash.

But (and for an instant I could not believe it) the boots turned, were gone. I was not yet safe; he could pause before he climbed the parapet and fire at me again.

I heard the scrape of his boot plates die away and listened once more to the creak of the span. He had only to pull that down or burn it to make me a prisoner.

How long before I dared move? The need to do that became a growing agony in me. I lay and endured as best I could. What came at last was enough to fill me with despair - the clatter of a ship’s ramp being rolled in. Hory was back in his fortress and he had activated the sealing of the ship. Preparing to take off?

I waited no longer, struggling against the stiffness and pain in my body, rolling into the shadow of the parapet. Then I pulled along to reach the span. It was still in place; Hory had not stopped to destroy it. Perhaps he intended to return and investigate what lay here after he had made sure of Eet and the ring.

Half sliding, at a speed which left splinters in my hands, for I lay almost flat on that fragile link with land and allowed its slope to carry me to the beach, I reached the sand. Once ashore, I sprinted for the underbrush, expecting at any instant to be enveloped by fire.

The very uncertainty of what might be happening, or Hory’s next move, was as hard to take as if I were under physical attack. I must rely entirely on Eet. And whether at this moment he was a helpless captive I did not know. But I could not expect more than the worst.

There was one fairly safe place if I could reach it - directly under the fins of the ship. Always supposing Hory did not choose that particular moment to press the off button and crisp my cowering body by rocket blast. Throwing all caution to the winds, I dashed straight for the ship and somehow reached that hiding place. My side was ablaze with pain. The laser had not really caught me - I would have been dead if it had - but it had passed close enough to burn away the fabric and leave a red brand on my ribs.

So far I had managed to keep alive. But now what? The ship was sealed, Eet imprisoned in it, and Hory the master of the situation. Would he lift off world? Or could his curiosity be so aroused by the vault that he would make another visit to it? The ring! What if he used the ring even as we had done and followed its guide? But would he be so incautious-

“Murdoc!”

Eet’s summons was as demanding as a shout from an aroused sentry.

“Here!”

“He is now under my control - for how long-“ Eet’s thread of communication broke. I waited, tense. Dare I beam to him where I was and how helplessly outside the sealed ship? If his control had slipped, then perhaps Hory would be able to pick that up too. I knew too little about his own powers.

Then I saw the loops set in the fin, surely meant to be hand- and footholds, leading up to the body of the ship. But would they bring me to any hatch? They might be for the convenience of workmen only. That they might - a thin chance - be indeed a way in, made me move.

My seared side hurt so badly as I racked it by my struggles that only will power kept me going. I reached the top of the fin. My ladder did not end there as I feared it would. The holds were now smaller, less easy to negotiate, but beyond them was the outline of a hatch.

I took a chance- “Eet!” I am sure my summons was as strident as the one he had roused me with, because I knew this to be my last chance. “A hatch - lower - can you activate the opening?”

I knew that I was asking the impossible. But still I made my way toward it, clung to the side of the ship as sweat poured down my face and arms, threatening my hold on those slippery loops.

But the crack around the sealing was more pronounced. It was giving. I loosed one hand and beat upon it with all my strength. Whether that small expenditure of effort did hasten the process, or whether the controls suddenly loosened, I had no way of knowing, but the whole plate fell away.

What I crawled into was a much larger space than the upper hatch into which the ramp led. And it was occupied, almost to the full extent of the area, by a one-man flitter - a scout intended for exploration use.

I had found not only a door in but a possible escape out. Before I crawled over and around the machine to the inner hatch, I got out of the flitter one of its store of emergency tools, a bar for testing the composition of ground, and wedged it with all the strength I could to hold the hatch open. Now, even if Hory tried to take off, the ship would not rise. That hatch would have to be closed and he must do it by hand. The protection alarms of the ship would see to that.

The inner hatch had no latch, and it gave easily. I was out in a corridor. I had a laser, and I had also taken an aid kit from the flitter. Now I leaned back against the wall to open that. I brought out a tube of plasta-heal and plastered its contents liberally over my ribs. That almost instantly-hardening crust banished pain and began the healing, giving me renewed strength and mobility.

Then, feeling far more able to tackle what might await me above, I slipped along the ladder. Had I had more than a passenger’s knowledge of the ship I might have found a more secretive way from level to, level, but I did not. So I had to go openly, up to the control cabin, where I was sure I would find both Eet and Hory.

I did not attempt to touch minds with Eet again. If my last appeal to him had alerted the Patrolman, then Hory would guess I was in the ship and would be readying traps for me.

One small advantage I had. My feet had nearly worn through those coverings which had been the linings of the space boots. The material was tough but it had become very thin. The lack of boots now gave me silence as I took the core ladder one hesitant step at a time, listening ever for either a betraying noise from above, or the sound of engines.

I had advanced to the level which held the galley. As yet I had heard nothing, nor had I had any message from Eet. The silence which covered my advance now seemed ominous to me. Perfect confidence on Hory’s part could keep him waiting for me. And since I would emerge from a well in the floor there, he would have me at his mercy when I reached my goal.

Now I had only those last few steps. I flattened myself against the ladder, tried to make of my body one giant ear, listening, listening.

“I know you are down there-“ Hory’s voice. But it sounded thin, strained, almost desperate, as if its owner was in such a vice of tension as to be on the raw edge of breaking. What could have reduced him to such a state?

“I know you are there! I am waiting-“

To burn my head off, I deduced. And then Eet broke in, but he was not addressing me.

“It is no use, you cannot kill him.”

“You- you-“ Hory’s voice arose in an eerie shriek. “I’ll burn you!”

I heard the crackle of a laser beam and cringed against the ladder. Then I found myself climbing without my mind ordering my hands and feet into action. There was ozone in the air and I saw, shooting across the mouth of the well, flashes of light.

Eet once more: “Your fear is self-defeating, as I have shown you.” He seemed very calm. “Why not be sensible? You are not unintelligent. Do you not see that a temporary alliance is going to be the only solution? Look up at that screen-look!”

I heard an inarticulate exclamation from Hory. And then Eet spoke to me.

“UP!”

I took the last two steps with a rush, remained half crouched, my laser ready. But I did not need that. Hory stood, his back to me, a laser in his hand, but that hand had fallen to his side. He was staring at the visa-screen and I saw over his shoulder what held him oblivious.

Across the inlet, facing the platform of the vault, a square of gleaming metal pushed out of the brush, advancing onto the sand at a crawl. I do not know what type of machinery it hid, but there was a small port open at its top. And I thought that whatever lurked behind it was certainly a deadly promise.

How well protected this ship might be I could not tell, but there are some weapons which it might not be able to withstand. A quick lift could be our only hope. But - the bar I had left in the hatch - an anchor keeping us grounded.

“Eet-“ I paid no attention to Hory. “I have to unstopper a hatch - so we can lift-“

I half threw myself into the well, skidding down the ladder in a progress which was a series of falls I delayed from level to level by grabs at the rails. Then I slammed along the corridor at the bottom, wedged past the flitter once more. I had done my work of locking the hatch open almost too well. Though I jerked at the bar, I finally had to use the butt of the laser to pound it loose. At last it fell with a clang. I pulled at the far too slowly moving door, brought it shut, dogged it down as fast as I could.

Panting, I started back up the ladder. Would Hory’s solution be the same? If so, I would have to reach a shock cushion before we lifted. Also - what was going on in the control cabin?

My ascent was not as speedy as the descent had been, but I wasted no time in making it. And I half expected to be greeted by a laser blast; or at least threatened into submission.

But Hory stood with both hands on controls, not those of the pilot, but another set to one side. A beam flashed out from the ship. The visa-screen allowed us to follow its track as it struck across the platform. But it was mounted on a higher course now, to hit directly on that wall of metal moving slowly out of the brush.

There was no resulting glow of the sort that would have followed such an impact on any surface I knew. It was almost as if the shield simply absorbed the ray Hory hurled at it.

I glanced from the screen to look for Eet. There was a burned-out, melted-down mass of wiring to one side of the passenger webbing. But if that had caged the mutant, it had not done so for long. Now he clung to the pilot’s seat, swinging back and forth, as intent upon the screen as Hory.

A second or two later, and the ship rocked as if a giant fist had beat upon it. Not from the direction of that advancing shield, but from behind. We had been intent upon one enemy and lowered our guard to another. There was no time to assess the nature of that second, only to feel what attack it launched. I kept my feet by grabbing at the back of the seat. Hory crashed against the bank of buttons he tended, caromed off to the floor. Lights flickered and ran wild across both boards.

Eet sprang from his hold to the edge of the board. We were slightly aslant, enough to make it noticeable that we had been rocked from a straight three-fin stand. Another such blow would send us over, to lie as helpless as a sea dweller stranded ashore.

“Cushions!” Eet’s warning rang in my head. “Blast off-!”

I caught at Hory, pulled him over against the pilot’s chair so that we both lay half across the webbing. The quiver of the ship’s awaking was about us. I saw Eet’s paws playing across the board, his long body seemingly plastered to that. Then we did indeed blast off - into a nothingness of mind.

EIGHTEEN

There was the sickly taste of blood in my mouth, a lack of clarity in my mind-

“Murdoc!”

I tried to raise my head. Under me, for I lay on a smooth surface, a vibration reached into my body, bringing into life every ache and pain I had. I rolled, brought up against a wall, clawed above me for support, and at last got to my feet.

Fighting against dizziness, I stared slowly about. Eet still clung to the edge of the control board. And drawing himself aloft, even as I had done, was Hory, blood trickling from a gash along his jaw, his movements discordant and fumbling.

I turned to Eet. “We upped ship?”

“After a fashion.” Seemingly he was not so affected by the force of the take-off.

“Back on the sealed course again-“ I could remember better now.

Hory shook his head as if trying to clear it from some bewildering fog. He looked at me, but in an unfocused way, as if he did not really see me. Or, if he did, my presence had no meaning for him. He put out a hand to catch at the pilot’s seat, pulled himself laboriously into that, and relaxed in its embrace.

“We are on course.” His voice was drained and weak. “Back where we were. Next set down will be at the Patrol base - or do you want to reverse again?”

He did not turn his head to look at me as he spoke. If the active combativeness had gone out of him, there was still a core of determination to be read in his tone as his voice grew stronger and steadied.

“The Guild are in control down there.” I did not know what I wanted, save to keep from sudden and painful death, a fate which had dogged me far too long. Perhaps some men savor such spice in their lives, but it was not to my taste. I was so tired I wanted nothing but peace. And a way out - with neither the Guild nor the Patrol snapping at my heels. The only obstacle to that was that neither organization was one to relinquish easily what it desired. In that moment I damned the day I had first laid eyes on the zero stone. Yet when I looked to Eet and saw he wore the ring about his forelimb, something about it drew and held my eyes. And I do not think I could have hurled it from me had it lain within my grasp. I was as tied to it now as if I were bound by a tangle cord.

“To no purpose-“ That was Eet. For a moment I did not understand him, so far had my thoughts ranged.

“Look-“

His paws moved and on the visa-screen appeared a picture.

“This registered as we took off,” he explained. “It remained.”

I saw the platform of the heads approaching sharply, as if we had crossed above it. And I remembered the ship had been slightly aslant.

“The tail flames of the rockets” - Eet used his instructor’s voice - must have swept across it”

He did not enlarge on that but I understood. The flames - could they have resealed, or cleaned out the crypt? If sealed, then the cache of the best stones was once more hidden. And we were the only ones who knew of their existence! A bargaining point? The stones we had seen in the room of the ruins had been close to exhaustion, those in the vault fresh. They were probably the cream of those owned by the ones who had established the tomb. If the Guild depended upon those from the ruins, they could still be defeated by whoever had the others.

I knew that Eet was reading my mind. But he remained silent, so that Hory could not share my realization of that small superiority. The mutant continued to watch the visa-screen until it went blank.

“They are not going to find what they want,” he said to Hory.

The Patrolman lay in the webbing as one exhausted. The blood on his cheek was clotting. His eyes were half closed.

“You have not won either,” he said, his words slurred.

“We never wanted to win anything,” I responded, “except our own freedom.”

Then I felt a sudden strange sensation, a sharpening of contact- Eet’s thoughts? NO! For the first time I touched, not Eet, in such communication, but another human brain directly.

I tried to break away. It had been hard at first to accept that Eet could so invade my mind at will. But somehow I had been able to stand it because he was alien. This was far different. I was being pushed against my will into a raging torrent which whirled me on and on. And even to this day I can find no proper words to express what happened. I learned what - who - Hory really was - as no man should ever know one of his fellows. It is too harsh a stripping, that. And he must have learned the same of me. I knew that he meant to bring me to his form of justice, that he looked upon me with scorn because of my association with Eet. I could see - and see - and see- And that enforced sharing went on forever and ever. I saw Hory not only as he was now, but as he had been back and back down a trail of years - all of which had formed him into the man he now was - just as he must also see me-

I fought vainly against the power which made me see so, for I feared I would be utterly lost in that other mind, that Hory was becoming me, and I Hory. And we would be so firmly welded together in the end that there would be no Hory and Jern, but some unnatural whirling mass fighting itself - trapped so-

Then I was released and flew out of the mind stream as if some whirlpool had thrust me off and out. I lay retching on the floor, aware again that I had a body, an identity of my own. I heard noises from the pilot’s chair which suggested my sickness was shared, even as we had shared other things - too many of them.

Somehow I got to my hands and knees and crawled to the wall again, once more pulled myself up by holding to the equipment here. I faced around slowly to stare at Hory, while he looked back at me, dully, with a kind of shrinking.

Beyond him, on the. floor, lay a small flaccid body-

Eet!

Keeping hold on the wall, for without that support I was now helpless to move, I edged along until I passed Hory to stand above the mutant. Then I let go, fell to the floor rather than knelt, to gather up Eet’s body and hold it tight against me. That same emotion which had moved me when Hory had tried to kill Eet in the engine room flooded through me once more. It strengthened me, shaking me completely out of my daze.

Eet had done that - had made us free of one another’s minds. And he had done it for a purpose. I cradled Eet’s too-limp body, smoothing his wiry fur, trying to discover some indication he still lived.

“You know,” I said to Hory, “why-“

“I know-“ His words came with long pauses between them. “Is - he - dead?”

I stroked and smoothed, tried to feel some light breathing, the pound of a heartbeat, but to no purpose. Even so, I could not allow myself to believe the worst.

However, I did not try to reach Eet’s mind. Now I shrank painfully from such contact. I had wounds which must heal, the strangest wounds any of my species may ever have borne.

“The- aid- kit-“ Hory’s right hand rose, shaking badly. Yet he managed to point to a compartment in the far wall. “A stimulant-“

Perhaps. But how well medication intended for our breed would serve Eet I did not know. I worked up to my feet again, holding the mutant tightly to me, and began that long journey around the cabin. One-handed, I fumbled with the latch, snapped open the cubby. There was a box - in it a capsule. And that was slippery between my fingers, so I had to use care to bring it forth. One-handed, I could not crush it.

Holding it and Eet, I retraced my steps, bracing myself erect by one shoulder against the wall, back to Hory. I held out the capsule. He took it from me with trembling fingers while I steadied Eet’s body. Hory broke the capsule under that pointed nose, released the fumes of the volatile gas. His hands fell back into his lap, as if even that small exertion had completely exhausted him.

Eet sneezed, gasped. His eyes opened and his head moved feebly as it turned so he could see who held him. He did not try to leave my hands.

Once more I gathered him close to me, so that the head, raised a little as if to welcome such contact, now rested on my shoulder close to my chin.

“He is alive,” Hory whispered. “But he- did- that-“

“Yes.”

“Because we must know - and knowing-“ The Patrolman hesitated until I prompted:

“And knowing - what? You are wedded to your purposes. But you must know now that mine were not as you believed.”

“Yes. But - I have my duty.”

He gazed at me, but again as if he did not see me for what I was, but rather beyond, into some future.

“We are not meant-“ He continued after a pause, “to know our own kind in that way. I do not want to see you now, it makes me - sick-“ His mouth worked as if he were about to be physically ill.

My stomach churned in sympathy. He was right. To look at him and remember- Man is not vile - most men - nor depraved, nor monstrous. But neither is he meant to violate another as we had done. Having Eet as a conductor between our minds was one thing; to be directly joined - never again!

“It was meant that we might understand. Words can be screens - we needed free minds,” I said. Were he to retreat now into a denial, an attempt to be as we were before, he would negate all Eet had done to save us. That I dared not allow.

“Yes. You - are - not as we thought.” He appeared to make that concession against his will. “But - I have my orders-“

“We can bargain.” I repeated Eet’s earlier suggestion. “I have something to offer - a cache, untouched, of the stones. Did you read that also?” That was my one fear. That when my thoughts had been laid bare to him, he had uncovered all I needed, for the sake of the future, to hide.

“Not that.” He turned his head away. Looking at me bothered him. “But the Guild-“

“Does not know of this one. Nor shall they find it.” I could not be sure of that, I could only hope. However, I thought I had a right to argue.

“What do you want in return?”

I made my first offer as I did because there is no reason why one should not begin at the highest point, as every trader knows. “Freedom - to begin with. After that - well, I am a masterless man with Vondar Ustle gone - in a way he died for this. I want a ship-“

“Ship?” Hory repeated the word as if it were new to him. “You - a ship-?”

“Because I am no pilot?” I chose thus to interpret his surprise. “True, but pilots can be hired. I want payment - our freedom and credits enough to buy a ship. In return - the position of the cache. It seems to me the price is low-“

“I am not authorized to make any such bargains-“

“No?” And then I repeated two words, drawing them out of the time when we had been one.

He turned his head laboriously to look at me again, his face very cold and set.

“True - you know that also. So-“ He added nothing, but closed his eyes.

I felt a soft bump against my chin as Eet moved his head, almost as if he nodded approval. Eet had been suspicious of Hory. He had reported a shield - had he suspected what might lie below that? Known that this was no simple scout but a Double Star Commander, sent on a special mission? Or had only suspicion been his before he hurled us mind to mind?

A Double Star, one of those whose word could be accepted at once in an agreement. If Hory did now so agree, we were safe.

“We get all the stones,” he said. “That ring also.”

My fingers had found the ring on Eet’s limb; now they closed about it tightly. Not that! But Eet’s head once more bumped my chin. He dared not use mind reach intelligible to Hory, but he was trying in this way to communicate. Without the ring - I could not-

I saw Hory’s eyes glitter in rising triumph, and knew that he believed he had found my weak point and would thus regain control of the situation and us. In that moment I had the strength for our last battle of wills.

“The ring also - after an agreement is taped.”

Hory hitched himself up, reached to the control board. He used his forefinger to release a print seal, bring out a treaty com. There was no mistaking its white and gold casing. And its very presence here told me of his importance among his command.

Now he held it to his lips. But he wet those with the tip of his tongue and hesitated a long moment before he began to dictate:

“In the name of the Council, the Four Confederacies, the Twelve Systems, the Inner and Outer Planets,” he recited formally, as he must have done many times before, it came so easily to him, “this agreement shall hold by planet law and star law.” He added figures which held no meaning for me but must have been an identification code. Once more he switched to words:

“Murdoc Jern, status, assistant, gem buyer, late apprentice to Vondar Ustle, deceased, is hereby declared free of all charges made against him-“

“Erroneously,” I prompted as he paused for breath.

“Erroneously,” he agreed, not looking at me, but at the com in his hand. “In addition, free of all charges is one Eet, an alien mutant, now in association with Jern.”

So now it was officially recognized that Eet was no animal but an intelligent entity coming under the protection of laws made for the defense of such.

“In return, Murdoc Jern agrees to release to the custody of the Patrol certain information, classified” - once more he rattled off a series of code numbers - “which is his. Accepted, sealed, coded by-“ and he unemotionally gave that name which was not Hory, and certainly not on a roster of scouts.

“You have forgotten,” I broke in sharply. “The bargain is also for compensation-“

For a moment I thought he would refuse even now. His eyes caught mine and I read in them a cold enmity which I knew would exist on his side for all time. He had been humbled here as he thought I had not, or rather he felt a humbling, though I had not in any way triumphed over him. For our embroilment had been mutual and if he felt invaded, was I any the less violated? Now I added:

“Was it any worse for you than for me?”

“Yes!” He made of that an oath. “I am who I am.”

I supposed he meant his Double Star, his training, the fact that in the service he was above and beyond some regulations. But if he was a man who had climbed to that post, and the Patrol was as incorruptible as it claimed to be, then also he must be a man of some breadth of mind. I hoped that was true.

Yes, he had said, but now his eyes changed. There was still hatred for me in them, but perhaps he was a bigger man than he had been only moments earlier.

“No - perhaps it was not-“ He was just.

“And there was to be compensation.” I pressed my point. “After all whether you accept it or not, we have been battle comrades-“

“To save yourselves!” was his quick retort.

“No more than yourself.”

“Very well.” Once more he raised the treaty com. “Murdoc Jern is to receive compensation in connection with his information, this to be set by a star court, not to fall below ten thousand credits, nor rise above fifteen.”

Ten thousand credits - enough for a small ship of the older type. Again Eet’s head moved. My comrade found that acceptable.

“Agreed to by Murdoc Jern.” He held out the com and I bent my head to speak into it.

“I, Murdoc Jern, accept and agree-“

“The alien, Eet- “ For the first time during this ceremony Hory was at a loss. How could a creature without vocal communication agree on an oral recording?

Eet moved. He swung his head toward the tom and from his lips issued a weird sound, part the mew of a cat, yet holding some of the Basic “yes.”

“So be it recorded.” Hory’s tone had the solemnity of a thumb seal pressed by some planet ruler before his court.

“Now” - he reached for another taper, taken from the same recess as the treaty com- “to your part.”

I held it before my lips. “I, Murdoc Jern, do hereby surrender” - might as well get the worst done first “into the hands of a duly registered member of the Patrol a ring set with an unknown stone, the gem having unusual and as yet unexplored possibilities. In addition I do hereby state that there are two caches of similar stones on a planet unknown to me by name. These can be found as follows-“ And I launched into descriptions of the cache in the ruins and that of the vault.

The knowledge that he had been so close to both and had not realized it must have been bitter to Hory. But he did not reveal his feelings. Now that his true identity was known he was a different man, one lacking the more emotional reactions of Hory the scout. When I had described both caches and their locations to the best of my ability, I handed the tape mike back. He took it from me as if he feared to touch my fingers, as if I were unclean.

“There is a passenger cabin to the left of the galley,” he said remotely, not ordering me to it, but making his desire plain. And I wanted his company no more than he wanted mine.

I descended the ladder wearily, Eet riding in his old place on my shoulders. But before we had gone the mutant had shaken the ring loose, to leave it lying on the edge of the control board. I did not want to look at it again. Perhaps Hory locked it away with the tapes - I did not want to know.

The passenger cabin was small and bare. I lay down on the bunk. But though my body ached for rest I could not quiet my mind. I had given up the ring, the small knowledge I had of the caches. In return I had our freedom and enough to buy a ship-

Buy a ship? Why - why had I asked for that? I was no pilot, I had no reason to want a ship of my own. But ten thousand credits could be used-

“To buy a ship!” Eet answered.

“But I do not want - or need - and cannot use a ship!”

“You will - all three.” His reply was assured. “Do you think I went close to ending my being to earn us anything else? We shall have a ship-“

I was too tired to argue. “To what purpose?”

“That shall be discussed at the proper time.”

“But - who is to pilot it?”

“Do not dwell so much on the skills you have not; consider rather those you have. There is something else - look within the inner pocket where you carry what is left of your gems.”

It had been so long since I had thought of that poor store, a most meager base for the future, that I could not guess what he meant. I fingered that inner pouch and the stones in it moved under my touch. I loosed the seal to turn out the sorry collection. Among them was - I snatched at it and between thumb and forefinger I held a zero stone in its lifeless phase.

“But-!”

Eet read my thought. “You have broken no oath. You surrendered exactly what you promised - the ring and the location of the caches. If another has seen to a better bargain for you - accept it without question.”

Hory - above - could he tune in on our exchange? Would he now know what I had?

Eet was plainly alert to the same danger. “He sleeps. He was close to the end of his strength though he did not reveal that to you. But do not mention this again. Not until we are free.”

I dropped the stone among the others - all the bits from my wanderings. To the uninitiated it would certainly seem worth no more than, perhaps not as much as, the rest. Eet’s cleverness needed no comment.

Then I, too, surrendered to sleep. And sleep I did, off and on for much of the rest of the voyage. But at times Eet and I talked together. Not of the stones, but rather of other worlds, and I reviewed my gem knowledge. I had none of Vondar’s prestige, but I knew his methods of trade. And were I to have a ship, there was no reason why I could not continue on my own. Eet encouraged me in such speculations, leading me on to discuss my chances. I was glad to turn my thoughts from the past, and perhaps it gave me some pleasure to play the informant and instructor. For this was one field in which Eet lagged behind.

But there came a time when I was interrupted by a sharp order over the ship’s com. We were nearing the base port, it was necessary to strap down for landing. And Hory continued, saying that I would find my cabin a temporary prison until he could make the proper arrangements. I would have protested, but Eet’s head counseled discretion.

The mutant had a listening attitude after we set down. And I heard the clang of boot plates on the ladder, passing my cabin. Eet became communicative when their echoes died away.

“He is out of the ship. And he will carry out his part of the bargain. He takes with him the ring, to put it in safekeeping - as I had hoped. Now it will not betray you should you pass near it with the other stone.”

“Why did it not do that in the cabin?”

“It did. But at that time you were too occupied otherwise to notice. Get free of these Patrolmen as fast as you can. Then we shall be about our own business-“

“That being?”

Eet was amused. “Gem hunting-what else? I told you that world was not the source of the stones. The Guild and the Patrol will believe so for some time. They will search, they will mine. But they shall not find what they seek. We have only sniffed out the first few steps on a long cold trail. But we have what will serve us as a guide.”

“You mean - we are to keep on hunting the zero stones? But how? Space is very wide - there are many worlds-“

“Which makes our quest only the more worth the trying. I tell you - we are meant to do this thing.”

“Eet- who- what are you? Did you - were you of the people who owned the stones?”

“I am Eet,” he replied with his old arrogance. “That is all that means aught in this life. But if it troubles you - no, I was not of those who used the stones.”

“But you know much of them-“

He interrupted me. “The Patrolman is returning; he brings others. They are angry, but they will hold by Hory’s bargain. However, walk softly. They would be only too pleased to have some reason to pull you down.”

I faced the door as it opened. Hory stood there, with him another, wearing a uniform with signs of high rank. Both men watched me with cold and wary eyes, their antagonism like a blow. Eet was very right, they would like nothing better than to get me by some infraction. I must walk as warily as in a quaking swamp.

“You will come with us. The bargain will be kept.” The officer with Hory spoke as if it hurt him. “But for your own protection you will be in maximum security while you are here.”

There was a spark in Hory’s eyes. “We can keep you safe. The arm of the Guild is long, it can reach far, but not into a Patrol base.”

So he made clear his thoughts. I had had two enemies. I might have now dealt successfully with one, but there was still the second. My hand wanted to cup over the stones in my inner pocket. Would the zero stone only lead me further and further into danger? I remembered my father and Vondar - and the legendary might of the Guild.

However, who may seize upon time and hold it fast, not allowing the moments to slip by him? I had said I was not a gambler. But Fortune appeared determined to make me one. With Eet warm and heavy about my shoulders, and the future, misty and threatened as it was, before me, I left the cabin to walk into a new slice of life.

Perhaps I went better armed and armored than I had once been; the sum of a man’s knowledge may change from day to day, and experience is both sword and buckler. As long as Eet and I walked the same road, free under the stars, then could the present be savored, and let the future take care for itself - After all, what man can influence that knowingly?

I found it enough to have this hour, this day, this small moment, as a victory over odds which I now marveled at our facing. Perhaps I was true son to Hywel Jern in spirit if not body. And still I could cup hand at my will across a zero stone. The door of the cabin was open. So was that of life, and I had not yet found its limit.

The End