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