The Blaze of Noon
Analog – September 1961
(1961)*
Randall Garrett & Avram Davidson

Most planets start with a core of heavy elements—but this one didn't. And the human colonists on it had, in consequence, a very peculiar sort of culture ...

"Oh, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon ..."
—Milton: Samson Agonistes

-

	THE "forming platform" had gone long ago, but the place where it had stood was still studded by the truncated abutments upon which the great grid had once been erected. The area might long since have been swallowed up in high grass and its vast pillars shattered and pushed aside by upthrusting trees, but sheep were grazing there now, and they kept the vegetation down to a series of green reticulations. The ground sloped gently on all sides toward a square basin near one edge, which was lined with moss-covered stone. Reeds grew thickly along its sides, for the basin bad become a pond whose water level varied with the seasons.

	At the moment, it was rather low. It only came to the knees of the man who stood in the middle of it, a heavy case in each hand, swearing angrily in a low voice.

	Gardel, the herd-boy—shock-headed, dirty-faced—had heard the sudden splash and had looked around. He wondered why the man had chosen to jump into the middle of the pond, muddying up the water for his sheep. He started down the slope toward the newcomer. His look changed from annoyance to surprise, and almost to alarm, the closer he came. Finally he stopped, a good ways off, and stood watching, tensed for flight.

	The man in the pond, whose name was Gail'sson Bayer Tad, stopped swearing. He called over to the boy: "Is it this shallow all around? Can I just go on walking out? How about giving me a hand? You won't get your clothes dirty!"

	And it was true that the boy's ragged shorts only came partly to mid-thigh. 

	"Wh'are ya, Mestor?" the boy asked, his voice uncertain. "What's it ya do's ere?"

	The man in the pond grimaced. "What an entrance!", he complained. A sudden grin spread over his face. "Do? What I'm supposed to do—what I've come here to Hogarth's for—I'm supposed to build the Grid again. You know what I'm talking about? Fixee Grid? Or—"

	Under his dirt and tan, the boy went red. He took a step forward. Then excitement gave way to awe—he stopped—to fear. Face awry, he turned and fled up the slope.

	The man in the pond yelled to him to come back. Then: "Hey! This is Hogarth's Planet, isn't it?" Presently the boy, never stopping nor looking back, vanished over the brow of the nearby hill. The man in the pond began to swear once more.

	Life on well-ordered Sirius V had scarcely prepared Gail'sson Bayer Tad for splashing about in the watery muck and slime of country pools. Even the stinks on this planet were different from those he was used to. He made his way across to the bank very gingerly, holding the heavy plastic cases out of the water. Not, he thought wryly, that a little water would hurt them; the one in his left had contained personal belongings and small pieces of equipment, the other contained his powerpack, and both of them were waterproof, but he held them up as a matter of principle.

	He squelched up the slop to the crest and looked around.

	He hadn't known exactly what he'd expected to see. The garden-surrounded villas and pleasure-domes which had once characterized the settled parts of Hogarth's Planet? Or their ruins, perhaps, still smoking?

	Smoke there was, a good distance away to the east of him, its source concealed behind low, rolling hills. Trees, singly and in clumps, with grayish, mottled trunks, and big, lacy leaves, like gray-green doilies, stood out oddly against the bright green of the grass. Here and there were other irregular patches of gray vegetation—alien life forms contrasting with the familiar green of Earth-type plants.

	He saw something that looked like an archaic beehive magnified several times—the shepherd's hut, he guessed. As he topped the rise, a dog gave a yowling bark but didn't approach. Near the hut, he saw the boy talking to an older man, one outstretched arm pointing in Tad's direction.

	Both of them were staring at him. Tad lowered one of the cases to the ground and waved at them, but they simply continued to stare. He set the other case down and flexed his fingers. They were heavy! Then he sat down on the power-pack and waited. Let them come to him. He had a feeling that if he went towards them they'd simply retreat.

-

	After a minute or two of speculative conversation, the two began to walk slowly towards him. Tad just sat quietly. As they came closer, Tad saw that the long staff he had seen the man pick up was not, as he had first assumed, a shepherd's crook; it was a spear, tipped with a tapering, wicked-looking point of bone, stone, or shell. Suddenly, the weight of the heavy gun beneath his left armpit was very comforting. It would take but a fraction of a second to reach into his jacket, draw, and fire.

	A pair of fiercely ugly dogs, unlike any breed Tad had ever seen before, trotted along beside the pair. One of them began yapping loudly. The boy picked up a small stone and shied it at the animal's flank. "Sharrup, Bogey!" The dog yelped and went silent. The man was gaunt and bony, and a thin patina of dirt clung to his skin, looking as though it had established its right to be there by long occupation. He wore more clothes than the boy, but they were just as ragged—trousers, shirt, cape, a broad-brimmed leather hat, a sporran, a shell knife. One eye-socket gaped red and empty. His mouth, too, gaped, but it was filled with the broken, blackened stumps of teeth. He stopped and blinked his one good eye. Then, word for word, he repeated the boy's question.

	"Wh'are ya, Mestor? What's it ya do's ere?" Then he added: "It's Robard's land ya's on, ya knows. He's Grammestor ere, and ya musts no be ere less'n e permits."

	The boy interrupted with a sudden flow of words, of which Tad got only "... Grammestor issame says, tis not issame place ere—Gridland oly and common'eld—some'at like a smithy ..."

	"Um, um," said the oldster. "But this be's no Gridland up on the ill ere." He looked back at Tad and asked for the third time. "Wh'are ya?"

	"My name is Gail'sson Bayer Tad," he said evenly.

	The man looked puzzled. "All that? Ya's a worshipful?"

	"Dress like one," the boy said in awed tones. "And metal!" He was eying the watch on Tad's wrist.

	Tad didn't feel like either confirming or denying a question he didn't understand. "I've come from Sirius V, to—" he began.

	"Sir'us?" The oldster's ravaged face quickened. "Eard tolds a that place. Ya's fro' near Earth, Mestor—ya says?" Suspicion began to cloud the single eye as acceptance almost won out.

	"Near there," Tad said. After all, what was nine light-years in comparison to the distance between the Terran Hegemony and Hogarth's Planet?

	"And ya's rich, too," the boy said.

	"Well, no; I—"

	"Ye', Mestor," said the old shepherd, "ya's rich. Or be's it true what th' old tales told say ... 'In th' Old Worlds even the poor ones gots metal'?"

	"Why, of course," Tad said.

	"Ah!" The shepherd and the boy looked at each other, then back at Tad. The old man's mouth was all but drooling. "Ya musts go's ta Robard, Mestor."

	"Na, na," the boy said quickly. "Ifs I tolds Robard, Grammestor's comes ere to Mestor."

	"Um," said the oldster. "Go's tells. Runs!"

	The boy took off without another word, his bare feet hardly seeming to touch the grass as he ran.

	"E be's back quick," the old shepherd said, taking a firmer grip on his spear. His voice became almost obsequious. "Would'a like t' ave a bit a bread? Or some smoke-meat? Or I gots some nice cool clabber-milk down to the shack." He gestured toward the giant beehive.

	"No, thanks," Tad said. "I just ate." It was true—besides which, he didn't think he wanted to eat anything this grimy old serf had prepared. And, too, he had a sneaking hunch that the old shepherd had designs on the wristwatch or perhaps the other metal in his clothing. He kept his right hand near his gun and waited warily.

-

	It was half an hour before anyone showed up, although it seemed more like two hours to Gail'sson Bayer Tad, who had spent it in a question-and-answer fencing duel with the old shepherd. Then, in the distance, he heard a muffled thudding, and, looking up, he saw four animals and their riders coming over the hill from the direction in which the boy had disappeared.

	For a few startled seconds, he didn't even look at the men on the beasts; he was too busy looking at the beasts themselves.

	At first he had thought they were bears; they were shaggy, and their gait was similar to that of a bear running on all fours. But the head was totally unbearlike. It was earless and long—much longer, even, than a horse's, in comparison with the body—and it was attached to the end of a long, shaggy neck. The teeth were the long, flat-topped grinding teeth of the herbivore, and the feet had blunt nails, rather like those of an elephant.

	By the time Tad had shifted his attention to the men, the group had come quite close. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the shepherd had doffed his floppy leather hat and was standing with his head bowed respectfully. The leader of the group, whom Tad supposed to be the Grammestor Robard, ignored the shepherd.

	At a distance, the men had appeared to be magnificently clad. Their clothes were brightly colored and extravagantly cut in a style Tad had never seen before. But, as they drew closer, he could see that the magnificence was more than slightly soiled. Grease stains showed on Robard's shirt of fine red wool, and the cuffs of the trousers were muddied. His sandal-clad feet were dirty. On his head was a tall, lambskin hat, and around his neck hung a chain of either brass or gold—Tad couldn't tell which.

	There was a metal knife thrust into the broad belt, and the grease from the blade had stained the cloth. His left hand grasped a metal-tipped spear, while his right held the reins that guided the alien beast.

	Robard himself might have been handsome if he had been younger and had been brought up on a world which was kinder to human beings. But the eyes beneath his broad forehead were red and puffy, and his lips were dry and chapped. When he spoke, he showed that his teeth were in better condition than those of the old shepherd—but only slightly so. His tongue seemed gray and swollen. It was obvious that the Department of Public Health on Hogarth's Planet had been defunct for a long time. The others of the entourage looked no better.

	Tad hoped prayerfully that the immunization he'd undergone on Sirius V was as thorough as it was supposed to be.

	Grammestor Robard leaned forward on his mount and peered at Tad. "Ya's fro' Sirius—boy says ya tolds?" He emphasized the second syllable as if to show that he was no ignorant serf. "How's it ya fro' Sirius when the Great Grid's gone?" When he said "Great Grid," he and the other men made an odd gesture with their right hands. "Ya's not got up like men fro' Yarkrite, here—nor like what's told of way they gets sames up on other islands. True. But tell me how's it ya gets here fro' Sirius?"

	Since Robard hadn't bothered with any introduction, Tad didn't either. "I didn't need the whole Grid. It took a lot of power, and a lot of careful computation, just to get me through, but there was enough of the Grid left to do it."

	Without another word, Robard stood up in the stirrups of his mount and looked down at the expanse of grass where the huge grid had once been. He looked for a long time, it seemed, then he lowered himself, scowling, back into the saddle. "I sees no Grid," he said flatly.

	"Of course not," Tad said. "It's buried. The main part of the Grid was up on those pillars, ten feet above the ground. But that square pit, there, where the pond is now, was the pit for an elevator. The platform is raised by a piston from underneath, and it fit into the rest of the Grid when it was raised. But it's buried under the mud at the bottom of that pit now."

	Robard smacked his thigh with a heavy hand. "Son of an orse! Under the pond! Been there all these underdyears! High Ram!" A sudden idea silenced his boisterous outburst. He turned to the other men and said threateningly. "Any man tells a this, by High Ram, I's 'pales 'im! Ya hears?" They nodded silently.

	He turned to Tad, his face taking on an expression which he presumably thought to be that of a gracious host. "Ya musts comes wi' me, guest-fella. Milk and honey we gives ya, hot meat, honor seat at table, and clean fleece on the bench! Not a Grammestor in Yarkrite gives better guesting than Robard. Come! My own sister's eldest son, my bonded heir, gives ya is orse and leads the beast by bridle, Eh, Soby?"

	Soby, a younger, rather hard-faced man, climbed off his mount wordlessly and held the reins for leading.

	"You, Edder! Grabs the Mestor's pack-boxes or whatever they be's and get 'em on ya's orse."

	Tad didn't want to let the equipment out of his hands, but he couldn't see what he could do about it. Keep an eye on 'em and keep a hand near the gun, he decided. He climbed aboard Soby's orse, and the procession moved off.

	Robard leaned over and hissed into Tad's ear: "Build Great Grid again, ya says! Later, we talks a that, and a what elp there be's for the widow's son." And his eyes fell greedily to Tad's wristwatch, dagger, and belt buckle.

-

	Grammestor Robard's place was not, as Tad had assumed it would be, a single house. It was part fort, part encampment, with outer walls of mortared brick and fieldstone, surrounding an open area in which were scattered, higgledy-piggledy, houses of logs or roughly hewn timber, with turf roofs, tents of cloth or skin, and a multitude of brushwood huts. There were two low hills, each crowned with walls of fieldstone.

	The party rode on past the first of the low hills, and, as they did, the men doffed their hats. Robard noticed Tad's look. "Smithy," he said, replacing his hat. Tad, unsure of what he should do, belatedly bobbed his head towards the enclosure. There was a certain relaxation all around as he did so.

	It figured. Hogarth's Planet had a crust which was very deficient in heavy metals, and what little there was had been eroded from its major pockets aeons ago by the wash of the great sea that covered eighty per cent of the planet's surface. That was, in fact, the main reason why it had been selected for this particular phase of Project Retouch. If the Hegemonic Government could be convinced that even a planet so poor in natural resources as Hogarth's could rebuild its Grid from locally available materials, it would probably loosen up the purse strings for further reopening of the planets which had been cut off during the Rebellion.

	That also explained the covetous, envious stares that had been directed at every metal object he carried. It explained the lack of metal, even among the armed men—spears tipped with bone or shell. It explained the shepherd's half question: "On th' Old Worlds even the poor ones gots metal?"

	Under such conditions, it was no wonder that a smithy received the reverence due a holy place. And hadn't he read or heard somewhere that on Earth itself, in ancient times, there were places where the iron-workers were priests as well?

	The village, if such it could be called, stank, but the stench seemed to bother no one but himself. Robard certainly showed no sign of thinking his capital lacked anything, from the way he peered, with sly pride manifest, from the corners of his swollen red eyes. And when Tad observed diplomatically, "This is quite a place you've got here, Grammestor," the man smirked and threw out his chest and gazed about complacently.

	As they came to the second hill, with its high enclosure of rough mortared fieldstone, a sort of guard emerged hastily from a narrow doorway, saluted and stood at attention. The door itself, obviously operated by overhead pulleys, slid upward into a slit in the wall. The nobles ignored the salute, and Tad simply held his head high.

	The doorway was just wide enough for one mounted man at a time to ride through; the party had to go single file. Inside, they followed a narrow passage that turned twice at right angles. In the roof overhead, small holes, hardly larger than a man's head, let in enough light to see by.

	The reason for the traplike passageway was obvious. Without metal, it was impossible to build a door that could be both fireproof and easily maneuvered. If the place were besieged, the door could be burnt down or smashed in. But the besiegers would still have to come through that trap passage slowly, one at a time. And those holes overhead would admit more than just light; boiling water or burning oil or arrow shafts could go through them as well. You could feed an army into a trap like that without getting a single man through.

	Inside, after the small party had emerged from the tunnellike corridor, they came into an open courtyard. In the center of it, looking oddly out of place in its primitive surroundings, stood a long building of poured concrete which Tad recognized at once as a workers' barracks typical of the period when Hogarth's was first settled. The usual corrugated aluminium roof was missing, however, replaced by one of tiles, mossy and blackened with age. Here and there a tile was lacking, and the gaps had been covered by slabs of wood, each with a stone on top to keep it from being carried away by the wind.

	Outbuildings of all sorts had been added to the concrete barracks, and the marks of fire were on the walls. No one had said anything, but the military trappings and fortifications convinced Tad that the fire had not been a peaceful one.

	Hogarth's Planet had once been peaceful, Tad knew from his study of the planet's history up to the Rebellion. In the early days, its lack of heavy metals had turned it into a "pleasure planet." Here, unvexed by the sights, sounds, smells, and turmoil of heavy industry, the wealthy and the retired, and those who attended upon them, lived an easy exurban existence.

	The planet certainly wasn't good for much else. Its lack of heavy metals made it useless for mining or industry, and the native life forms, with their magnesium-based blood and alien metabolisms, weren't commercially useful. Even the staple foods, such as grain, vegetables and meat, could be grown on the planet only after its soil had been thoroughly enriched with fertilizers containing iron and other trace elements necessary for the metabolism of earth-type organisms.

-

	Hogarth's Planet was old—fantastically old. When the planets of Sol were still dispersed dust motes in a collapsing, eddying cloud, Hogarth's Planet was already billions of years old. Such planets were rare—so rare that it was likely that no more than two such systems existed in the entire galaxy.

	When the vast gas cloud that was to become the galaxy began to coalesce into stars, only one element existed—hydrogen. There were no planets born of that coalescence because there was nothing to form them of—hydrogen is too light to form and maintain a mass of planetary size in the vicinity of a radiating sun. It can only form suns. And those suns became the cooking-pots for the elements as the thermonuclear reactions in their interiors built up the nuclei of the denser elements.

	Eventually, after millions or billions of years of cooking, the nucleus of such a star becomes loaded with heavy elements—mostly iron-56. And then, in a short half hour, it goes supernova, scattering its substance across billions of cubic light-years in one tremendous, self-destroying explosion. And, after more billions of years, those dust clouds again coalesce, producing "second generation" suns and their families of planets—for now the elements exist.

	But Hogarth's Planet, like MacDuff, had been ripped untimely from its mother's womb.

	Two of those primal stars, their interiors only partially cooked towards the heavier elements, and nowhere near the supernova stage, had that accident that is so rare among stars—a direct, head-on collision or something very close to it. The resultant explosion was supernova in violence if not in mechanism. From the resulting cloud of dust, containing only a smattering of elements heavier than vanadium-51, the sun and system to which Hogarth's Planet belonged had been formed.

	Hogarth's Planet was more than two and a half times as massive as Earth, but, with a density only sixty-two per cent as great, its diameter was on the order of twelve thousand seven hundred miles, giving it a surface gravity within one per cent of Earth's, and a surface area nearly two and a half times that of Earth.

	There had been no vulcanism on the planet for billions of years; without the radioactivity of heavy elements to keep it warm, the core gradually cooled. Mountain-building had ceased long ago, and the tides, rain and winds had done their erosive work on the land surface, so that now the only land projecting above the surface of the sea was composed of islands and island chains totaling less than a quarter of Earth's land area.

	Since the gravitational gradient was not as great as that of Earth, the planet had once held a much deeper, denser atmosphere, but it had lost much of that through the aeons, and now it was only a little denser than that of Earth.

	Had there ever been intelligent life indigenous to Hogarth's Planet? Possibly, but no trace had ever been found. Such a race could have evolved, hit its zenith, and passed into senility and oblivion by the time the first half-living protoviruses were still being formed in the organic soup of Earth's seas.

	For the people of the Hegemony, it was obviously not suited for anything but a garden spot to retire to when one had finally socked away enough millions to be able to afford it. And then, too, there had been a few paleontologists, geologists and theoretical astrophysicists who were interested in the history of Hogarth's Planet.

	Earth-type plants and animals had been imported, and here, as on many other planets, had acclimatized themselves and now shared the planet with the local flora and fauna, which, because of their alien metabolism, were inedible to Terran organisms. Once the forests had been seeded with the proper sort of grass, deer had been released in them, flourished, and been hunted. The island-studded seas were parted by the hulls of yachts and smaller pleasure craft. The Grid itself had been set up on the prosaically-named First Island—which the inhabitants had, for some mysterious reason, renamed Yarkrite—which was about the size of New Zealand's three islands combined. True, the cost of matter transmission was high, but, aside from metals, only luxury items came in, and those who could afford to live on Hogarth's could afford the toll.

	And then had come the Debacle, the Deluge, the Crash, the Insurrection, the Rebellion—call it what you will. The teeming, swarming, boisterous, take-no-nonsense-from-the-Old-Worlds-Hegemony colonies had burst into flame, into open rebellion. Their demands for autonomy, higher prices for their raw materials, and lower prices on the manufactured goods they imported, had all been refused. So they had turned their Grids into troop-launching platforms and had poured armed men—raging and spoiling— into the older planets.

	At first, they were fantastically successful. On the staid, settled worlds of the Hegemony—the planets of Sol, Procyon, Sirius, Alpha Centauri, and the others within a score of light-years of Sol—no one had actually thought that armed men would suddenly appear in the matter transmitters where tons of cargo had been expected. And, one after another, the transmitters had fallen under the carefully-timed, almost simultaneous onslaught from the discontented colony worlds.

	But the advantage they had was only an apparent one. Within a short time, the transmitters had been retaken when it was possible and blasted into plasma by a thermonuclear bomb when it was not. Cut off from supplies and vastly outnumbered and underweaponed, the colonial troops were soon mopped up.

	And the transmitters to the outer worlds, once shut off, remained shut off. The shock and fear had caused a reaction in the minds of the people of the Hegemony: Cut off the Outer Worlds! All of them! No exceptions! Not even for Hogarth's Planet, certainly as eager to maintain the status quo as any of the Old Worlds. Nor for any of the other innocent planets that were cut off, willy-nilly, the good along with the bad.

	And, since the colonial planets had no transmitters, only the pickup and receiving Grids, and no technicians or scientists who could build transmitters, the cut-off became permanent.

	That had been three hundred years ago, and now Tad was seeing the results.

-

	Old Robard did, indeed, offer Tad milk and honey. Tad barely licked at either. A woman came to the table where they were all seated in the main hall and washed their feet—a ceremony which Robard from appearances, generally skipped on his own account. Hot meat was soon prepared: Grilled lamb. A stew of dried fruits served for dessert, and a sort of raw brandy to finish off with. The old man got quickly, quietly drunk, in a controlled sort of way. Some of the others—masters of flocks and lands held under the Grammestor, who were on hand by the accident of coming to court for business—elder sons of these, doing guard duty—younger ones, supposedly learning manners and the use of arms—were not so careful. Or perhaps simply not so experienced with brandy.

	Robard's two nephews sat next to him, two villainous young men with long, blue chins. The nearer, Soby, paused in his whooping and hollering to blow his powerful breath in Tad's face. "Ya brings us metal, eh, guest-fella?" he shouted.

	"Well—"

	"Ya owes it to us! Three underdyear—orse-son!"

	On a sudden, angry impulse, Tad said, "Do they curse guest-fellows at Robard's table!"

	The old Grammestor turned his head at this and suddenly dashed the contents of his cup in Soby's face. "Kiss hand, ha baghan!"

	Tad didn't know the word, but the nephew did. He winced, sobered somewhat, pressed his wet lips to Tad's hand before it could be pulled back, and muttered apologies in a fawning tone. Tad grunted and turned away, but the nephew tugged at his sleeve with fingernails as long and dark as his chin.

	"I got twenty pigs, ya knows," he gobbled, mouth twisting with satisfaction.

	Tad didn't show his surprise at Soby's sudden about-face. "Oh? Fat ones, are they? Sheep, too, I supp—"

	"Uh?" A scowl, quickly replaced by an obsequious leer. "Ya laughs, guest-fella! Ya be's a jolly one! But ya knows I means pigs a iron. Twenty of'm, I gots. My bond, posteds in th' treasure-ole by High Grammestor's Ouse, ta Greatbay City. Says true. Bonded heir ta th' old Grammestor, and I be's richer nor e. Be's another wh' asked th' heirship, the orse-son—" He darted an ugly look at his brother, Edder, who was yowling into his mug of drink. "But e coulds posts no bond. Twenty pigs, ya hears? Don'ts I gives the Teller's-man ta th' treasure-ole a copper-bit or some'at ta keep th' pigs slick? Grease keeps the rust off. Twenty pigs, true. Old Mom gives 'em ta me, bond-posts time. Er dowry, ya knows."

	Impressed by this odd tale of mother-love for such an unlovable object, Tad asked, "Where's your Old Mom now?"

	"Croakeds," said the heir and magnate, indifferently. He drank.

	Old Robard hadn't been saying much, and the others were, for the most part, too awe-stricken—or too drunk—or both—to do more than stare at Tad and then glance quickly away if they met his eye. Robard's own eyes kept straying to the dagger in its ornamented sheath at Tad's belt. The amusement Tad felt was tempered by the thought that his own culture had reverted to the ancient mores in some ways, too, since the dagger was the symbol of his rank as a Technician Beta-Fourth.

	Yielding to temptation and brandy, he stood up and said in a clear voice: "Noble Grammestor Robard, I wish to show my appreciation for the welcome you have given me and the honour you have bestowed upon me."

	Robard blinked drunkenly for a few seconds, then ponderously rose to the occasion.

	Before he could say anything however, Tad, with all eyes upon him, unclipped the dagger and sheath from his belt and proffered it to the Grammestor.

	"Noble Grammestor, please accept this gift as a token of my esteem for you and those who follow you loyally."

	Robard, showing almost superhuman restraint, took the sheathed blade slowly and reverently. Then he grasped the hilt and withdrew the dagger from its scabbard. The stainless steel blade gleamed silvery.

	At that moment, Tad could undoubtedly have deposed the bonded heir, twenty pigs or no twenty pigs.

	"Ya sees this?" cried Robard suddenly, kicking his nearest table-mate into sobriety and wakefulness. "Ya knows what this be's? Steel, ya hears? None a ya's rustin' iron or pishy green copper! This be's what ya calls metal! Look, ya orse-sons! Steel!"

	And they looked, shocked almost into violence, envious and awed.

	Robard turned and embraced Tad. "Ah, High Mestor, now I knows ta true that ya comes fro' th' Old Worlds!" Tears poured from his red eyes, making them redder. The gray, swollen tongue popped in and out of his mouth like a toad in a hole. "The' be's no trickery ere! No' in any land on Ogarth lives a man who's gives away proper metal, who's gives away steel! Our faith-keepin's no' for naught! Great Grid sh' be rebuilt! I sha' sees it a standin', may the Grand Artisan a the Universe spares me!"

	Tad felt that this was a propitious moment if ever one could be found. "I'll do my best to bring that very thing about, Noble Grammestor," he promised. "But I'll need help."

	That succeeded in bringing the Grammestor more or less out of his ecstasy. "Tells us," he pleaded, "tells us, Worshipful, what musts we do?"

	"Oh, not a great deal. I'll need a few strong men and some good orses for the heavy work. I'll need sea salt and a few other things—not much. And as soon as the Grid is rebuilt again, all new, then Earth and the other Old Worlds will begin shipping in tools, machinery, medicines—things like that—to help you."

	"Metal ..." Old Robard nodded and smiled and wagged his head. He licked dry lips with an ugly tongue and beat on the floor with his staff. "Met—tal-l-l ..."

-

	Tad was very sleepy. The room in the "palace" to which he was shown, had evidently lodged, until that moment, some semi-morganatic consort of the Grammestor. A clean blanket was thrown on the bed, more as ritual gesture than anything else, and an earthenware ewer of water put in its basin on the chest next to it. He set up an alarm system, and was almost at once in bed.

	He had some dim, confused notion that he had been briefly and partially awake during the night; that a strange voice, a deep voice, was saying, "No forge on Ogarth makes this dagger, true. Be's proper Old Work. High Ram! But why was I not tolds? Not summoneds?" But when he woke up, he thought it was a dream, and promptly forgot it.

	The breakfast was an odd one, certainly. He had never before begun the day on the soup of a hen cooked with its own unshelled eggs. And some rude attempts had been made at preparing fancy pastry, sticky with honey, and oozing sweet, soft cheese. Old Robard dunked ...

	Then, mouth half-filled, beaming, he said, "Worshipful, I brings ya proper thanks for ya gifts of much metal. May ya's iron never rusts, and ya girls bears mostly boys!"

	It was evidently a ritual phrase, and so Tad replied with another, out of his own culture. "I receive with felicity these assurances of Your Excellency's good will, and regret only that the dagger was of such palpably poor quality that naught but Your Excellency's innate nobility prevents his mentioning it."

	After a moment, Robard having ingested this—and half a bowl of breakfast soup, into which he had rather messily dropped a pastry—the old man said, "Time for proper thanks for dagger be's last night, Worshipful; orse-son, mysame, for forgetting, then. Gives thanks now for bit of Great Grid we digs up fro' Pond, a slab o copper big as an orse, may m' Worshipful's iron never rust! 'Pale me, if it melts out to less nor eighty, eighty-two pigs. Ha, ha!" He laughed in the fullness of his joy, soup and honey glistening wetly on his bristly chin.

	Tad swallowed hard. "Grammestor, do you really mean—"

	A gurgling laugh. "Three underdyear she lays there! Waits for Robard! Metal! Ya names any Grammestor gots more, now, nor me? Orse-son Arnat? Leaves e boasts issame now, child a cheats that e be's. Ow clean she cuts—beauty metal!"

	"Grammestor, you actually—you dug up that single piece of the Grid and cut—you cut it up? You're melting it down—"

	A curious look came over Robard's face, like that of a child about to be faced with deserved punishment, but sure it can—and will—be avoided.

	"Na, High Worshipful, I asks: Ya tolds all at table that ya comes fro' Sirius ta builds a new Great Grid. Tolds so ya'same? Wha' for ya musts gots bit of old one, then? Nought ta ya'same, metal. Old Worlds be's all rich wi' metal, ya gives it away, true?" And so on. Finally Tad stopped him, assured him it would be all right.

	True, communication with Sirius V and the rest of the Hegemony would be cut off until he rebuilt the Grid, since his communicator depended on the Grid for relaying the beam across the vast distances between the stars. The old man's greed also cut off his only means of escape if things happened to get out of hand for any reason, on Hogarth's Planet.

	Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Order the Grid piece to be restored, reworked? Something told him that old Robard would bury his wives alive with a lot less fuss than he would surrender any piece of metal he'd once gotten hold of. On the other hand, if he left things be, the old man's gratitude could be useful.

	"I only meant that I'd needed to use the old Grid piece for a month or so; I wanted you to have it as soon as I was done with it. But it isn't really essential. I'm glad you have been able to increase your own wealth of metal so tremendously."

	A satisfied grin which almost closed the rheumy eyes. "Urn. True, I gots ta gives tithe ta High Grammestor, but that helps ya ta gets his permission: Ya needs that for the Grid work, building new one."

	"His permission? I thought I only needed yours."

	"Ya has that. But ya saids ya needed sea salt, true?"

	"True."

	"See, I hasn't gots much salt on m' own lands, and since I gots no sea coast— If I had my rights—but Arnat's grandsir, the baghan—" He brought himself to a halt and reformed his thoughts. "So sea salt be's out. Now: Gridland be's common 'eld, true? Great Grid be's for all, true? Grammestor's who gots much sea salt, then, they musts not ta speaks a pay or due. But they sha' speaks of it, the orse-sons—less'n High Grammestor do's order they musts t'elp. Then they musts."

	He frowned, sucked at his dry underlip. "I gots a proper saltlick a ways fro' ere. Be's any good?"

	Tad thought about it. It would depend entirely upon the magnesium content of the salt, and it wasn't likely to be high in a rock salt deposit.

	"We'll have to test it," he said at last. "But we'd better try to get sea salt if we can. Meanwhile, I'll do a little prospecting around here to see if some of the other rocks contain the metals I need."

	Robard looked astounded. "Ya gets metal out a rocks?"

	"It's possible, but it takes a lot of processing to get the stuff into solution. I'd rather work with sea salt."

	"Um. Umm—"

	"When can we see the High Grammestor, then?"

	"Oh, I sends a rider out with message last night. Be's back in three, maybe four days, with summons ta come ta Greatbay City ta sees High Grammestor. Then we rides."

	The idea of spending nearly two days on the back of a seasick-riding orse didn't appeal to Tad at all, but, again, there was nothing he could do about it. "When with a Vegan, be vague," he quoted to himself.

	Old Robard slipped a hand under lambskin cap and polished his head. "Gots a question. Always kepts faith, ya sees, but never understands this—"

	"Go ahead."

	"Like so: If ya can't go t' other stars if ya gots no Grid, how does ya gets the Grid there in the first place?"

	Oh, Son of Procyon! How was he going to explain that one? Still, it was an honest question, honestly asked, so he had to try.

	"Well, the first Grid has to be carried to a new planet in a spaceship. A—oh ... A starship, call it. I know, you aren't the only one who never heard of such a thing. Lots of people on the Old Worlds never heard of a space ... a starship. We haven't even built any for centuries. For underd-years. Don't need them, once you get a transmitter and Grid established.

	"You see, Grammestor Robard, a starship simply won't travel any faster than the velocity—than the speed—of light. Why? Uh, well— Well, look, a man can't run as fast as an orse, can he? Why not? Exactly. Because he just can't, that's all. A man can only run so fast and no faster. Same way with a starship; it can only go so fast and not any faster."

	Robard nodded slowly.

	"Now, if you had to go from planet to planet in a starship," Tad continued, "it would take years—underdyears, even—to get from one star to another. A man would die of old age long before he got where he was going. Travel through the Grid system is easier, safer, faster." He did not mention —in fact, barely remembered—that at the very first, matter transmission had been no safer than air travel. More than one group of pioneers, owing to infinitesimal errors in Grid co-ordinates, had been plummeted into deep space, there to die in an instant of time so brief there was no word of it, blood frozen crystalline on their unastonished faces. But people continued to try it, as their ancestors had continued to fly. And in time the dangers had disappeared.

-

	Tad continued. "But, as you say, you have to get the Grid to the planet before you can go there yourself.

	"Suppose, for instance, you were going to a star twenty-five lightyears away. It will take a starship twenty-five years to get there. But, since there's no Grid, that's the only way you can go. Only you don't go yourself; you send a machine in a starship—a robot, it's called; an automatic machine that just sits in that ship for twenty-five years and does nothing. Then, when the starship gets there, the robot automatically lays down a very small Grid. It can't build a very big one, because you can't put much material into that kind of a starship, but it can build one that's big enough to begin with."

	Robard's head wagged steadily; every time Tad said "machine," the Grammestor's eyes went to Tad's wrist watch.

	"Now—through that little Grid you can send material for the robot to make a little bigger Grid. Then you send more material—"

	The rufous eyes left the watch, focused on Tad's face. "Worshipful. What's it ya means, 'material'?"

	"Metal."

	Almost instantaneous understanding. Quick, rapid little nods of the head. No danger of wandering attention.

	"Pretty soon you've got a Grid big enough to send a man through, with enough material and enough equipment—tools—so that he can build a really good-sized Grid, see? So then, after the Grid is built, you don't need the starship any more."

	"True. But why not puts bigger Grid in starship?"

	"Not enough room. The trouble with the Vargans Drive is that the power consumption goes up as the fifth power of the mass, which means that a space ... a starship can only be about as big as your arm if its going to go any distance at all into deep space."

	"Urn ..." Robard looked at Tad for a long minute. Then: "I says not that I understands ya. But I believes ya. Ye', I believes ya."

	Tad's respect for the old cacique went up a couple of notches. He was unwashed and ignorant and his viewpoint on just about anything had been thoroughly warped by the mean circumstances of his environment and history. But he was capable of grasping that there were things he couldn't grasp, but which none the less might be true.

	And then, having come a little ways out of his narrow shell, he turned and went back in again. All the way in.

	"But I sees not why a man sends out a ship that comes no' back. Loses all that metal? Orse-son! Not goings ta do man no good if it be's twenny-fi' year gone and he be'd dead, time she comes back: do's man no good, says true."

	And then, before Tad could explain the advantages of long-term investments, or use the ancient metaphor of the old man who planted trees for others as others had planted trees for him, Robard stood up.

	"Gots ta go look over the graincrop ta Headman Fald's holding, sees what my double-tithe likely be's. Back before sundown." He gave Tad a snaggle-toothed grin. "Makes ya'-same ta home, Mestor Tad. Robard's place be's your place."

-

	Gail'sson Bayer Tad reined up on the orse and looked over the Grid-plain before him. The animal didn't move. An orse was remarkably easy to control, once you got the knack. Odd, that of all the native animals only this one had been domesticated; odd, too, that its Terran counterpart, from which the name must have been derived, had utterly vanished from Hogarth's Planet. But Tad didn't spend much time on these speculations. Neither zoology nor ecology was his province.

	Beyond stretched the Gridplain, not a big area, really—a hundred meters on the side, ten thousand square meters of grass surrounded and dotted like another Stonehenge with the ten-foot-high pillars that had once held up the Grid. He glanced at the now-ravaged pond where the last remaining bit of the Grid had been only yesterday—and smiled thinly at the thought that Robard had no idea that the pillars themselves were reinforced with steel. The old pirate would have torn them down in a passion, had he known. One hundred and twenty-one pillars, spaced ten meters apart over the whole area, standing at attention like the soldiers sprouted from the dragon's teeth of Cadmus.

	He wished it were as easy for Project Retouch to get technicians as it had been for Cadmus to get soldiers. He wished he had at least one other man to help him rebuild the Hogarth Grid. Not even another technician, necessarily; just someone who could carry a gun and keep an eye out for trouble while Tad did the work; someone he could talk to without feeling as though he were speaking through a language filter.

	But he remembered what his immediate superior, June'sson Litvinov Bob, had said—was it only seven days ago?—when they were warming up the transmitter for one final test before sending Tad himself.

	"One man's all we can spare, Tad," Bob said. "I wish we could send a dozen. I wish we could do a little reconnaissance, to find out more about the people there—or even if there are any people. But we can't afford the energy output. We're straining the budget as it is, to send out all that mass with you, to so small a grid piece."

	The transmitter chamber itself was smaller by far than the old heavy-duty transmitters had been; instead of the huge, hundred-meter-square cages that had been the focal points of a far-flung system three hundred years before, this cage was only a small one—thirty meters on a side. Tad looked at it and nodded as Bob went on.

	"You'll have to do your own recon work; the only thing we can tell you is that the probe beams bounced off a section of grid that is probably the remains of the elevator. The mouse we sent came back damp, but alive. We analyzed the water in his fur, and it's just stagnant pond water—nothing to worry about. Can't be too deep, because the grid section is within five feet of the surface. Naturally, if you run into any immediate trouble that you can't take care of ..."

	Tad said, "Like dragons in the pond?"

	"... Just thumb the button on the handle of your personal case, and we'll snatch you back immediately." Bob's face did not accord the quip so much as a nicker.

	"But only if there's no other way," Tad said, quietly serious now, still looking at the transmitter cage.

-

	June'sson Litvinov Bob considered this, gravely. He was a rather grave young man in all things. It was seldom that a smile creased his thin, bony face. He weighed Tad's comment, and its implications. Then, judicially, he said, "Well, now, if your life is in danger, don't worry about the expense. You're worth more to us than the cost of the power." He reflected again. "Considerably more."

	Tad said, "That's good to know. But—if you have to pull me back immediately, it'll be another year before we can try again."

	Bob nodded. "Right. That's the whole trouble with this project. Nobody's really frightened of the colonies any more; the Rebellion's ancient history. But there's still a certain touchiness on the subject. Look at the way the Hegemonic Government gives us this tiny grant, tells us we have to dig up the rest of the money by ourselves, and then hedges us in with more restrictions than they'd put on suspected plague carriers." His voice took on an aggrieved note.

	Since he considered himself a realist, Tad shrugged. "That's to be expected," he said, "since we're being used as a political fulcrum. Rosita'sson Keefer Sam doesn't give two hoots for the Project itself, but he wants to be Chief Delegate, and he's using us to pry his opponents out of office. If we succeed, he tells the Grand Assembly that the Hegemony is hidebound and reactionary and needs a new government. If we fail, his line is that the Hegemony is the victim of governmental extravagance—and needs a new government. Heads, he wins; tails, his opponents lose. What do you expect? No wonder the Government is so cagey."

	But Bob wouldn't buy that. "It's more complicated than that," he said, frowning. "It's a matter of economics, of sociology. The Hegemony is hidebound and reactionary—not just the Government, but our whole society. We've kept ourselves to ourselves for three hundred years—no exploration, no new frontiers, no new ideas. We're not just stale, we're moldy!

	"Why, look at us—technicians!—carrying our silly dirks and daggers and short-swords and all the other absurd insignia, looking for a position just a little higher up the ladder, and wanting nothing better than security— freedom from worries.

	"Nobody wants to try anything new or spend money for anything that isn't a tried and true, sure-fire investment. The circle is drawing in, Tad. Another fifty years and we'll be taking in one another's washing."

	Tad grinned at him. "And it's our job to go out and find new people to do our laundry?"

	"Or some new laundry to take in. If we can open up the Outer Worlds again—let's not think of them as 'colonies'—without making the mistakes we did last—we can stir up the atmosphere around here, at least."

	Gail'sson Bayer Tad said, well, he'd do his best. "Although I do feel a little bit as though I'd drawn an assignment to build a city in a jungle, with only my own hot little hands."

	A click of the tongue from Bob. "Hogarth's is no jungle. Besides what your success would prove in terms of economy, rebuilding a grid on a lack-metal planet, the fact that it is so poor in the heavy metals is what makes it the safest of the Outer Worlds. You won't have to worry about being met by a fully-equipped army, or anything like that."

	This seemed logical enough. Tad nodded. Bob continued, "And, after all, you don't have to set up one of the big, standard-sized grids. There ought to be enough pillars standing to put up a thirty-meter-square one, which is all our transmitter needs right now. You've got the tools and equipment to do it, if you can get any help from the natives there."

	"And if there aren't any natives? Or none in the vicinity?"

	With an Ask-me-something-hard-please expression on his thin, serious face, June'sson Litvinov Bob said, "Then you come back, and we wipe this particular phase of the Project off the books."

	As long as you don't wipe me off the books. Tad thought. But aloud all he said was, "Fair enough."

-

	And now, seven days later, he still wasn't sure whether the Project would be wiped off the books or not. Not only had his original contact with Sirius V been destroyed, but he was beginning to wonder whether he would ever be able to establish another. Robard had said that the messenger he had sent to Greatbay City should be back within three or four days. Six had passed already. If the High Grammestor was going to send for him, why hadn't he done so?

	Not that he, Tad, was looking forward to the ride, but since it had to be done, better sooner than later; and then on to the job he'd come to do.

	He dismounted and walked over to the area where he had decided to build his small section of the greater Grid to come. He had found twelve pillars in one part that made up a thirty-by-thirty meter square, and careful measurement showed that they were all in close enough alignment to require no further adjustments. The pillars had originally been sunk deep enough into the ground to keep them upright under tons of thrust. So few of them were out of line, even after more than three hundred years, that Tad suspected they were securely fastened to the planetary bedrock, hundreds of feet below.

	He walked around the set of pillars he had chosen, laying out in his mind the steps necessary to begin construction, although such thoughts were certainly a little premature. He'd have to make the beams first, before he started putting them up, and making the beams would be the toughest part of the job. But he'd like to get started.

	Maybe the ride to Greatbay City (City! Robard's place, multiplied by a hundred, stink and all, probably! Doubtful if all Hogarth contained enough people to populate a decent suburb on Sirius V.) wouldn't be so bad, after all. Certainly he felt more vigorous and alive since he'd come to Hogarth's. The higher oxygen content of the air here accounted for that, most likely. He hadn't had a chance to run an air analysis yet, but the way things burned here, with a brighter, whiter, faster flame than he was used to, showed that the percentage was more than the twenty-two per cent norm on S-V. And then, too, it might have been the abrupt change from the overheated social atmosphere he was used to—used to, and, to tell the truth, a little sick of; realist though he claimed he was.

	He heard the rapid thudding of pad-feet, and stepped out from behind a pillar to see who was coming, his right hand hovering near the opening in his jacket. He still felt uneasy around these people.

	As the orse and rider drew closer, Tad recognized Edder, Robard's younger nephew, pushing his mount for all it would go.

	"Ya there! Ya there! Mestor Tad!" he shouted as soon as he saw the technician. "Gets on ya's orse and comes!"

	Tad frowned. "What is it? What's the matter?"

	Edder pulled his orse up to a pawing halt. "Ya's gots ta comes back ta Grammestor's house! High Grammestor issame is comin's! Grammestor Robard—"

	Tad climbed into the saddle while Edder babbled on, half incomprehensible. Tad gathered that an advance guard had been sent ahead of the main party from Greatbay City to warm Robard of the coming of the High Grammestor himself and a retinue of several of the leading Grammestors of Yarkrite. 

	Evidently, Tad thought, as he urged his orse to keep up with Edder's, it would not now be necessary to make a trip to Greatbay City. The mountain had come to Mohammed.

	Although exactly who or what "Mohammed" was, he had no idea.

-

	As they rode back, Tad reviewed what he had been told about their illustrious visitor. The current High Grammestor, named Maddan, had held office since the death of his predecessor, two years earlier. He had been elected, as was the custom, by the fifty-odd Grammestors of Yarkrite, winning over his nearest competitor by a large majority. Maddan, in his own right, was the ruler of a district some distance north of the capital, which his bonded heir now governed as deputy.

	"E be's a sage one, Maddan," old Robard had said. "Winds Grand Chapter rounds is liddy finger. Knows lore, keeps peace ..." And he had begun to tell an involved and prolix story of how Maddan had brought to heel Robard's hated enemy, "Orseson" Arnat, a recusant sachem, on three separate occasions.

	Tad had imagined someone of noble stature, white-haired and white-bearded, his brow bound with a fillet, his noble visage filled with stern but kindly wisdom. And, indeed, when he ran his eyes over the group of strangers gathered under the trees in Robard's courtyard, he did see someone who— except for the fillet—answered that description. But it turned out to be a Grammestor named Eftor, whose lands marched with Robard's on the west.

	Maddan himself was a small, spare man, almost bald, with a severe and wrinkled face, and agate-green eyes which might have been those of a much younger man. He was dressed in surprisingly clean white wool, and the sporran at his belt was blue—dyed lambskin.

	Except for Maddan, all the strangers were standing. As with the first meeting with Robard, no introductions were made. Edder and Tad dismounted, and Edder slipped around to stand with a group of younger men of his own status. Tad, not knowing what else to do, simply walked up to Maddan, gave him a short bow, and then stood waiting.

	After a moment's silence, during which Tad was appraised by shrewd eyes, Maddan spoke.

	"Ya be's a Sinus, eh? Knows ya Prokkyon?"

	It took a moment for Tad to realize that Maddan meant Procyon. "I've been there," he said carefully.

	"Knows ya this'n?" he asked softly. He opened his hand and disclosed a small photograph, covered with glass—the first Tad had seen here—and mounted with gold. Obviously, by the way Maddan treated it, and the fact that it was rimmed with precious metal, it was of some religious significance Tad recognized the face that gazed at him from the ancient photo; he'd seen it in several of the books he'd looked at while researching in preparation for this trip.

	"Yes," he said, "it's—"

	"Soft!" snapped Maddan. "They's youngers ere as be's not a high degree!"

	Tad obligingly lowered his voice so that only Maddan could hear. "It's Sarah'sson Hogarth Willem." Then, as something more seemed desired, he added, "The discoverer of this planet."

	"Ye'," Maddan said, nodding his head. "The Finder." It seemed to Tad that the men who had been watching let out their breath together when they saw that nod.

	"An' knows ya th' use a this?" Maddan asked in the same soft voice. He held out a hand, and a nearby Grammestor handed him an object wrapped in finely-woven red wool. He unwrapped it reverently.

	"It's a slide rule," Tad said. He thought of mentioning that he had a better, larger, more complex one in his case, but he decided not to.

	Maddan thrust out his wrinkled under-lip. "Ya names it true," he said. "Now we asks ya—" He paused, then went on: "Ta what power must ten be raised ta give twelve?" And he handed Tad the slide rule.

-

	Log to the base ten of twelve, Tad thought. He could give it from memory, but evidently the proper procedure was to work it out on the slide rule. He took it, went through the operations, and opened his mouth. Then he closed it again and looked hard at the slide rule. How many places were required in what was obviously a ritual answer? Probably no more than could be read on the scale. "One ... point ... oh ... seven ... nine ..." he said slowly, watching Maddan's face, waiting for a sign that would tell him that he had gone far enough. But Maddan's face didn't flicker.

	Did Maddan want one more place or two? Should I say "two" or "one-eight"? he asked himself. Couldn't pause too long.

	"Two!" he said decisively, throwing everything to chance.

	The High Grammestor rose, his face twitching. "E knows the number!" he said tremulously. "E knows the Test Number! Ye', we sees it musts be's true, what Robard says ya tolds! Fro' Sirius ya comes, fro' th' Old Worlds! Ta builds Great Grid again, ta brings us lore an' beauty things an metal—"

	"Metal!" the word sprang simultaneously from every throat.

	Maddan rose and extended his hand. Tad took it, wondered at a peculiar pressure which he felt applied. For a few seconds the soft old hand lingered. Then Maddan said softly, almost in a whisper, in a tone which hinted of regret, "Ya gots no mother? Ya's never travelleds?"

	Tad, mystified, muttered, "Why—"

	Maddan turned to face the others. In a strange sort of chanting singsong, he began to recite something. Tad was reaching for his gun, and then he stopped as he recognized the words. "... Invested in me, I propose to call the craft to labor for the purpose of admitting to the mysteries of the craft ..." It was a ritual, a liturgical thing the High Grammestor was pronouncing. The accents were those of present-day Hogarth's, but the words were, by Hogarthian standards, the obsolete ones of three centuries before. "... Gail'sson Bayer Tad shall—"

	But before Maddan could finish his chant, there was a protest. It came from Robard's younger nephew, Edder.

	"Ere!" he cried. "Na! Why's it I gots ta wait my year after I be's named, an' I be's own sister's son ta Grammestor, full brother ta's bonded heir ..."

	"Sharrup!" Robard thundered, purple with rage.

	"... An comes a stranger as no one knows, be's ere six days, an—"

	But the whole company was in full cry against Edder by now, shouting, and thumping him.

	"Baghan's whelp!" shouted white-bearded, patriarchal, old Eftor, his face the color of his scarlet shirt. "Ya breaks inta High Grammestor's words? May ya's iron rusts!" And Edder was silenced, his face sickly under its blue stubble. Robard's hands twitched by the knife at his belt, his expression one of shame and rage.

	Maddan waited quietly, then said: "Ya's young; ya knows not lore. A High Grammestor can makes a smith on sight an' gots not ta wait." There was a rumble of agreement.

	Then, as if there had been no interruption, Maddan continued with the ritualistic phrases.

	When he had finished, many of those present began rummaging in their gear, drawing out leather aprons and gloves and putting them on. Then, as they formed into pairs for a procession, Tad was introduced—if the word could be applied to Maddan's merely naming the various men—to eleven Grammestors, the deputies of two more, the bonded heirs to eight of the eleven, and to various headmen. Those who were left over, being younger kinsmen and retainers of low rank, stayed behind as the procession moved out.

-

	They passed from Robard's castle into the village. One of the Grammestors had produced a small drum from somewhere and was beating out a march step—PUM-piddy, PUM-piddy, PUM-piddy ...

	The villagers stopped whatever they were doing to turn and look at the procession. They doffed their hats, and silently came closer to watch.

	The procession wended its way solemnly to the other walled enclosure, the smithy, where Tad had never been.

	Inside, he saw storehouses, open on one side, where great heaps of charcoal were stacked. Off to one side were smoking, baked-earth kilns, where the charcoal was being prepared. The men working at the various places around the enclosure merely touched their brows when the procession entered and went back to work; some, who could not interrupt what they were doing without disaster, didn't even do that.

	Tad had an idea that some of the charcoal manufacture was actually make-work, since there was more than this metalless culture could normally use in smelting and forging. Or, he thought, perhaps it was stored for fuel in the winter.

	The procession paused at the door of a strongly-built edifice of mortared fieldstone, and Tad was blindfolded. Maddan whispered further instructions in his ear. He waited a while, then the procession moved onward, with Maddan guiding him. Behind them, the doors banged shut.

	He heard Robard say: "Comes a stranger from afar."

	And then a voice—a deep voice. Suddenly Tad realized that it was the same voice he had heard in his half sleep the first night he had spent in Robard's castle.

	"What wants he?"

	And Tad replied as Madden had instructed him: "Light."

	Thus it was that Gail'sson Bayer Tad was initiated into the mysteries of the smithy craft, told of High Ram—the master craftsman of an ancient king, the solemn one—the widow's son, who died rather than reveal the mystery to those who were unworthy; of how the act of working metal from shapelessness into form symbolized the Primal Act of the Grand Artisan of the Universe; how men learned, by a proper study of the mystery of the craft, to shape their own lives and natures and purge themselves of dross ...

	It was only at this time that Tad realized that the government of the island was actually a theocracy, a sort of Papal State, with the High Grammestor as a Supreme Pontiff who held temporal as well as spiritual power. Whatever had remained of civilization, of technology, religion and culture on Hogarth's—the very planet itself being symbolically identified with "the widow's son"—had undergone a process of syncretism with a tradition far older than either human habitation on Hogarth's or the Debacle of the Abandonment itself.

	They took him up through all but one of the degrees at one session— a thing, he was told later, which had not been done within the memory of living men. The only degree to which he could not attain was that of High Grammestor itself. 

	I came to laugh, he thought towards the end, and stayed to pray.

-

	The procession wended its way back to Robard's castle, this time with Tad, as a newly-made Grammestor, clad in a leather apron and leather gloves, occupying a position of honor next to the High Grammestor himself.

	Inside the castle, a respectable feast had been laid out, bigger than the one Robard had treated him to six days before. This, however, was a more formal occasion: Robard was guesting his peers. There was, as before, heavy drinking, and long speeches as well. Tad tried to look interested, but his mind and eyes wandered. He noticed that one face was missing; Edder was nowhere to be seen, although his brother, Soby, was in plain sight. And sound. Tad wondered what had happened to the cadet branch of the family for his rude and almost blasphemous outburst.

	Finally, when the last Grammestor had made his last ceremonious hiccup and sat down, Tad had to make a speech himself. He began by trying to give them some idea, choosing his words carefully, of what life on Hogarth's would be like when it was again in communication with the Old Worlds. But the slack jaws and the uncomprehending, though awed and respectful, stares which met this attempt put a quick end to it.

	He made his concluding remarks short, full of implied beneficence, and no specific commitments at all.

	The guests growled their approval. They had understood as little of his speech as they did of the archaically-phrased ritual of the smithy lodge, and were thus very much impressed. It was a feeling of pious satisfaction which soon had most of them deep in their cups. Old Maddan caught Tad's eye and gestured to him, rising as he did so. They left the banqueting hall for an anteroom lit only by a guttering tallow-dip.

	When he sat down on a pile of fleeces, the High Grammestor faced the younger man and looked at him earnestly with his agate-green eyes. "Right noble an' worshipful Grammestor Tad," he began, "ya says that we builds Great Grid again, as the faith we kepts tolds say, an' brings elp ta the widow's son?"

	"That's right."

	"An' ya wills ta puts all tha' metal up on Gridplain? In plain sight, where all musts ta sees?"

	"I don't see how else we can do it," Tad said, somewhat baffled.

	"Then I tells ya—and I binds ya ta silence—that ya musts ta fail."

	Tad stared. "What? You mean you want me to fail? Why?"

	The old man shook his head and smiled ruefully. "Na, na, worshipful. If it be's for the Grand Artisan a the Universe ta keeps me alive till I sees Great Grid remade, an' I gots ta die then an' there, I dies content. We needs Great Grid, I tells true; Ogarth be's never mades for man ta lives on. We musts ta haves iron in the soil an' other metal besides, or we dies ere. But each year an' each day more a the metal be's washed away. The pigs a metal we has in keep for bond mights ta elp, but Grammestors a Grand Chapter never be's allowing precious metal ta be's lets ta rust ta makes fertilizer. Na, na; they hungers for metal too great.

	"An' that's why ya musts ta fail. Like a wheel musts ta turn when orse pulls cart, so Ogarth men, when metal lies in open, musts ta steal it. It be's their nature."

	Tad nodded. "I can believe they might want to steal it, but it wouldn't do them any good if they did." He smiled grimly. "If they got their hands on a chunk of metallic sodium, they wouldn't want it for long, believe me."

	Maddan's eyes narrowed questioningly. "Why says ya so?"

	"Because, in the first place, the stuff is as soft as the tallow in that candle, there, and, in the second place, it burns a damn sight faster. Just a little moisture is all it takes to set it off."

	Maddan's eyes narrowed further. "Then how's ya ta makes Great Grid out a such metal?"

	Tad explained how magnesium-clad busbars were made.

	"Ya makes hollow pipes, then," Maddan said thoughtfully. "An' ya fills 'em with the sodium. But why do's ya not make the beams solid out a magnesium?" He pronounced the word slowly, unused to it.

	"Because magnesium isn't as good a conductor of electricity as sodium. We need the magnesium for strength and relative corrosion resistance, and the sodium for conductivity, so we combine them, you see."

	Maddan nodded slowly. "I takes ya's word that it be's true; I do's not t'understand, but I takes ya's word." Then, after a pause: "But there be's others as mights not ta take it. Ya says metal burns; I takes ya's word as true. But others mights not."

-

	Tad wondered just what the old man was up to. Did Maddan want the Grid rebuilt or not? It seemed to him that the old man was being a little bit devious in his approach to the whole matter.

	"I'll give them a demonstration," Tad said. "I'll show them how the metal burns. Besides, can't you put a cordon of soldiers around the area?"

	"Mights ta elp," Maddan admitted reluctantly. "But ya sees, young worshipful, ow we be's ere. Like beasts. Each ates th'other. I sits in the middle, keeps a balance. I as power, says true. But I musts not t' ave too much power! Time I do's, they stops t' ates each other and they ates me. They combines against me."

	He frowned a little and looked through and past Tad, as though contemplating something in the infinite distance. "Men's minds be's hard ta makes ta change. They be's stubborn. They looks not ta new things, '"it holds fast ta old. Be's some as thinks it better ta dies than ta change." Then he looked up into Tad's eyes. "I be's not strong enough, not in Grand Chapter, ta makes grammestors an' smiths ta change, ta makes needful changes in ways a living.

	"But I has not the power ta even keeps a guard around Gridland if there be's that much metal in sight. Grammestors a Grand Chapter wills ta thinks I be's tryin' ta keeps metal for own use, ya sees."

	Tad thought he was beginning to understand then. The old man fancied himself some sort of Machiavelli who, by hook or by crook, had to maintain the balance of power between the Grammestors in order to stay in power himself.

	"Well, then," he said smoothly, "why not make sure that they don't get in each other's hair? Keep the balance, if you must. Why not assign a mixed troop of guardsmen to guard the Gridland—a fixed number from each Grammestor, to be picked by the Grammestor himself? That way, each will know that his own interests are being watched, and he can keep an eye on the others."

	Maddan looked thoughtful. Without another word, he rose, and, with his hands clasped behind him, walked over to stare out the single window towards the star-sprinkled night.

	Tad prudently said nothing, speculating on what was going on inside the mind of this barbaric half-king, half-priest. He decided then and there that he'd have to keep an eye on Maddan. Not that he suspected that the High Grammestor would deliberately try to sabotage work on the Grid; he felt that the old man honestly wanted to see it rebuilt. But he was certainly capable of using the situation to his own ends.

	There was a long silence. A dim noise of drunken revelry filtered in. A drop of hot tallow fell with a tiny splash. Then, abruptly, Maddan turned to face the technician.

	"What musts ta be, musts ta be. We sets the guard around Gridplain as ya says, each Grammestor watching his own. Now, what is it ya needs ta build Great Grid?"

	For the rest of the evening, they discussed materials and labor.

	Project Retouch would go ahead as scheduled.

-

	The bloom wore off the peach fairly rapidly. The next four months were months of hard work for Tad—not only physical labor, but intense mental and emotional strain.

	The actual technical work was relatively easy. No one, fortunately, had attempted to break into either of Tad's cases—although they would have found it difficult, even with metal tools, and almost impossible without them. The power pack itself was the whole basis of his operations. It was a small, compact, inordinately expensive mechanism that burned hydrogen directly into helium, converting the resultant energy directly into electric current. Fueled by the water condensed from the air, it could produce plenty of current on very little fuel—but the supply of nucleo-passivated californium-254 necessary to force the reaction was terribly expensive, and the stuff didn't act as a true catalyst, since it was slowly used up in the reaction.

	Building the graphite-encased electrolytic cells for the production of magnesium and sodium was a difficult job, even with the best of equipment.

	But, by the end of the third month, he was producing the current-carrying grid beams that he needed. Magnesium salts were rare in the sea salt, but there were enough to produce the cladding that would protect the metallic sodium filling from oxidation in the oxygen-rich air. The main beams, which stretched from one pillar to another, to support the smaller beams, were triangular in cross section, a little less than two feet on a side, made of inch-thick hardened magnesium and filled with metallic sodium. They were somewhat larger than the copper beams that had been used to build the old Grid, as they had to be to carry the currents which would be induced in them by the transmitter on Sirius V at the moment of transmission. Fortunately, the induced current flowed for less than a microsecond—otherwise, the tremendous energy would have burned them up. Even those huge conductors couldn't have carried the current for more than a tenth of a second without breaking down.

	By the time four months had passed, Tad had built his main beams and was adding the smaller crossbeams that would cross between the larger ones.

	It would have been an impossible job if he had had to do it by himself without the aid of the corvee, the levy exacted by Maddan of all the subordinate grammestors. Each was required to produce a certain number of men, serfs and soldiers, calculated on a pro rata basis according to the population of his fief; as well as rations to feed them. A considerable reduction in manpower was allowed those from whose lands salt was forthcoming, and similar dispensations accorded those supplying orses, carts, extra rations, or metal.

	The latter provision, of course, was merely a ritual phrase. No sachem turned in so much as a nail.

	The plain adjacent to the Gridland resembled an ant heap. Caravans of carts soon wore ruts in the ground as they wound in, laden with salt, and departed, empty. There were not enough carts, not anywhere nearly enough. The lack was supplied by porters, long files of them, bent double beneath their burdens; and by pack-orses, used mainly for sea salt, a wooden box on each side of each beast. To unload every box would have taken too much time; instead, the bottoms were made of slats which slid out, allowing the salt to run down, and then replaced. The heaps of salt were quickly shifted, by wooden shovels, to huge piles.

	The raw materials were taken by hand-barrow to the field-stone and mortar building hastily run up for Tad's workshop, a building ceremonially granted the sacred and inviolate character of a smithy—though not even the most lore-rich grammestor could begin to understand what went on behind those narrow slits of windows. To forge iron, heated red-hot in a charcoal fire, was one thing, a thing they all understood very well. But Tad alone understood the difficulties involved in extracting magnesium and sodium from sea salt; the mysteries of electricity were unknown to the men of Hogarth's Planet.

	So the grammestors leaned on their spear-shafts and stared and muttered and gestured towards the tall chimney carrying off chlorine and other fumes. The poor wretches toiling on the corvee didn't even lift their eyes to stare.

-

	For a long while Tad was simply too engrossed with his own work to notice, but finally, one day, his brief break coinciding with the work-force's midday pause, he took in the whole scene—ragged, sweat-reeking, gaunt men simply dropping to the ground wherever they happened to be. Tad had raised a rude sandwich of gray bread and cold meat to his mouth, and stopped, frozen by the look of stark envy on the faces of the work-people lying nearby.

	"When do they eat, Grammestor?" he asked Robard.

	"Wha'?" Robard wolfed his own victuals, squinted at him. Tad repeated the question. Robard chewed painfully, swallowed. "They gets their eats at work-start," he said.

	"What sort of eats?"

	"Porridge-soup," And what was in it? Ground grain and hot water. What else? Each man had his own bowl. Was that all they got? No—at the late afternoon rest they were fed again. With what? "Porridge-soup."

	Tad, half-angry, half-incredulous, began to insist that the rations had to be increased; meat, milk or cheese, fresh or dried fruit ...

	Robard, altogether incredulous, and as angry as his respect for Tad would allow, told him that he was dreaming. That not all the resources of Yarkrite could supply that sort of food to this many men. That the fact of Tad's being cossetted with "guest-feastings" should not give him the idea that everyone ate that well all the time. That the Island's foodstuffs were being severely taxed, as it was, and only the hope of being able to replenish their stores by trading a bit of the expected metal-from-Great-Grid to other islands had persuaded the grammestors to risk as much as they had.

	So Tad's philanthropy died a-borning. The local soil, never exactly eager to respond to Earth-type husbandry, its surface thinly scratched with wooden plows, did not yield lavish harvests. A bad season could be disastrous. There being, at best, so little to save, the tendency was to eat everything but seed-corn—and, when "everything but" ran out, to go raiding for more. The bonding system, if strictly applied by a forceful High Grammestor, did tend to keep down raiding, and hence to maintain what feeble concepts of thrift existed. But no more.

	Robard ended his talk with a ritual phrase. " 'Is there no help for the widow's son?' " His gesture took in the Gridland and the workshop-laboratory. He lapsed into dialect. "There be's th' help," he said. Tad went back to work.

-

	Building the production shed had been easy with the help of the workmen, but shortly after production had begun on the metals themselves, he found it necessary to get rid of them. He hated to arbitrarily dismiss the whole work force and send them home, but there was no help for it; they had a tendency to steal every piece of magnesium they could get their hands on. Finally, he was reduced to doing the work himself, with the aid of only one helper.

	Robard's younger nephew, Edder, had been sentenced to three months in guard for his outburst at the initiation ceremony, which would have meant solitary confinement and a near-starvation diet. But he had been paroled to Tad instead, with the provision that he would work until the Grid was finished.

	Now the partly-completed Grid was surrounded by a ring of well-armed soldiers whose duty it was to keep everyone else away from the Gridland, to prevent the pilfering of metal. And even they were not allowed to come within two hundred meters of the Gridland itself.

	Tad was beginning to feel as though he'd been put to the torture. His muscles were aching from unwonted physical exertion, and his brain felt tired and sluggish, even after a good night's sleep.

	At first, he had been tempted to convert his equipment to the manufacture of smaller beams after he had made enough of the large ones to construct a small grid—one just big enough to enable him to contact Sirius V with his communicator. But that would have meant converting back so that more large beams could be made, and then converting a third time to make the small ones again. So, much as he longed to hear "properly" used speech again, he decided to hold off until the Grid was finished.

	Still, if it had only been the physical labor and the mental work of figuring tolerances and loads and energy flows, the job would have been a relatively simple one. But he had other things to worry about.

	Edder, for example:

	"Grammestor Tad, I be's works for ya faithful, eh?"

	"Faithful" was not perhaps quite the word Tad would have chosen to describe Edder's performance of his appointed task. Now cringing, now fawning, now glowering, now glaring greedily, now pretending insouciance, Edder, with his cunning little eyes and long blue chin, was something less than the ideal Man Friday.

	Still, why antagonize him? Tad gave a reluctant nod. "Yes, Edder."

	Edder all but pounced. "Grammestor Nothek—" He named a nondescript chieftain whose land marched with Eftor's on the north. "Grammestor Nothek be's a cousin ta Old Mom, as was. E gots no heir, just a gal-child." The young man's hands were trembling in front of Tad, as if Edder could hardly keep from taking hold of him, to impress him with the importance of what he was saying. "Now, now. Worshipful, for fifteen, sixteen pigs a metal, old Nothek makes me ta be's heir, ya sees."

	"Uh. Well—"

	"E be's old, old! Time he croaks, I be's Grammestor! I gives ya double-tithe for a tenyear, eh? Eh? Ya gives me fifteen pigs—"

-

	Tad wanted to pacify the boy; Edder was the only one who had seen the power pack in operation, and he had been hungrily eying the silver busbars that led out of it to the graphite electrolysis vats. If word got out that so much metal was available, Tad wasn't sure what would happen.

	"When the Grid starts working, you'll be able to get metal," he pointed out.

	"Ye'. Ya says that a'ready. But I means the metal ya's makins now. If I be's waits till all Grammestors as metal, then it takes more pigs a metal for bonding. Thirty, fifty, maybe even seventy pigs," he said cannily.

	"Edder, I've told you. I've showed you. You can't use this metal. It's too soft; it burns."

	But it was obvious that Edder didn't believe him. Tad had held a big demonstration of the inflammability and softness of sodium; he'd made several pounds of it and then tossed it into the pond on the Gridland while a group of the Grammestors were gathered to watch. They had been impressed and startled by the resulting violence, and the flare of yellow flame had widened their eyes, but it hadn't made any impression on Edder except to give his face a knowing look.

	The exhibition of the burning sodium was, in Edder's opinion, only a trick to mislead him. And, of course, it didn't mislead him at all. Metal didn't burn, and Edder knew it; no Old Worlder could fool him with a silly trick.

	Old Robard was not above dropping a few hints himself. He wanted to get his hands on the metal before Maddan did. Or at least before his archenemy, "Orse-son" Arnat, got any of it.

	"Cans ya gives me just a few pigs, Grammestor Tad?" he wheedled. "As a loan, a course. I pays ya back as soon as Grid be's built an' metal comes in for all."

	"Robard, I can't give you any. I've got to use it to build the Grid." He knew it was hopeless to tell Robard that the metal would be worthless for his purposes; he had already gotten the same knowing look that Edder had given him. So he tried another tack.

	"Look, Robard; I can't go on making this metal forever. There's only so much available, and we need it to make the Grid." He didn't try to explain that his power pack would only function for a certain length of time; he knew the metal-hungry old Grammestor wouldn't understand that, either. "You've got to be patient. As soon as we get the Grid built, there'll be metal enough."

	But it had little apparent effect. The trouble with these people was that they couldn't see beyond today. They wanted metal, and they wanted it now, not tomorrow or the day after. The idea of saving today's production output in order to have more for the future had almost never occurred to them. They had no concept of expanding an economy in order to provide necessities and luxuries for everyone, nor did they realize that savings must be enforced in order to expand.

	They would not go without for a while in order to have plenty and more than plenty in the future.

	Tad had to take all sorts of precautions to make sure his precious metal wasn't stolen while he slept. The magnesium ladders he and Edder used to climb the pillars were brought inside the "smithy" every night, and the building itself was carefully rigged with alarms to make sure no one broke in at night. He always locked Edder up each evening—not only for his own protection, but because he had been told to do so by Robard as a condition of the boy's parole.

	Tad even had to keep the Grid charged at night with enough potential to knock out anyone who tried to touch it, and he'd already caught two of the soldiers that way, before they learned to keep their sticky fingers off the beams.

-

	Then the day the two strangers came, riding so straightly toward the door of the "smithy" that Tad thought for a moment they meant to ride in, and moved to block their way.

	If they were strangers to him, they were not to Edder. His face—he had been badgering Tad for a promise of metal again—which had been merely malevolent, now grew murderous.

	"What's it they do's ere?" he muttered.

	"Who are they?" Tad asked.

	As Edder growled a string of curses, the two dismounted. The older man swaggered up to Tad. He was a red-faced, red-haired, bear of a man. Tad recognized him from description; it was Arnat. The other, a younger copy, must be his son and bonded heir, Jorg.

	"Ya be's Grammestor Tad, eh? Some'at new on Yarkrite—a grammestor who gots no' a single man t' arms! Smith, ya be's, eh? Well."

	He turned and surveyed the huge, silver-white beams that spanned the Grid columns in the near distance. When done, the Grid would present an almost solid surface.

	"They tells me true, I sees, that ya makes metal. I thinks it a lie when I first ears it, but now I sees ya tells true." He turned back and looked at Tad, as if taking his measure. Arnat's eyes were a pale and empty blue.

	"Ye'," said Jorg. "No' such metal on all Ogarth—na f'long time."

	Edder, not even trying to conceal his hatred, demanded: "Robard knows ya be's ere?"

	Arnat ignored him. He spat on the ground, faced Tad squarely, hands tucked into the belt which girded his huge waist. "How's it ya sends na word t' Arnat, then?" he demanded, his voice rising. "Gridland's common-'eld. Ya thinks ta keep me fro' my share a the metal?" Tad saw Robard and Soby riding hell-for-leather over the hill, followed by Eftor, who was —so he said—visiting Robard on private business. So Tad held his peace and let Arnat rage.

	And rage he did.

	"Ya's hand in glove wi' Robard!" he howled. "Ow's it ya gots na care a Robard's due to us? Metal he owes an' pays not, due an' debts since 'is great-grandsir's time?"

	Robard himself rode up in time to catch this, and it seemed to drive him half out of his mind. "Ya as na due!" he shouted. "Ya debt be's wiped out when ya great-grandsir takes away my seacoast land!" The ancient conflict seemed about to be fought anew.

	"Seacoast land be's taked away in fair war!" Arnat shouted hoarsely. "It as nought ta do with due and debt. Ya owes us metal! We means ta gets it!"

	Arnat, Robard, Soby, Edder, Jorg and others—men-at-arms whose names Tad did not know—moved nearer to each other. Then, abruptly, Eftor stood in the middle.

	"Twice in this tenyear, Arnat," he said, "we gots ta double ya's bond, ya troubles the peace so. If we doubles it again, 'as you the metal?" Arnat stopped his raging suddenly.

	Eftor went on. "If we's makes ya bond forfeit, Arnat, what then? Ya thinks a this? Best ya goes off an thinks, so."

	Arnat, huge head hanging sullenly, went, followed by Jorg. They seemed to be trying hard to think of that.

	Tad said, "Thanks, Grammestor Eftor."

	The white-bearded oldster nodded quickly. Then he said, "I brings this word fro' High Grammestor: We musts keeps a look-out for men fro' other islands. Maddan leaves no more catamarans goes out for off-island trade till Great Grid be done, less word spreads."

	Tad thought that was all foolishness, and said so. An embargo was as good a way of spreading suspicion, of making other islands wonder what was going on, as anything devised for such an end. But Eftor told him, with a touch of sharpness in his voice, that Maddan—and, for that matter, all of them—knew the people of Hogarth better than any newcomer from Sirius V could. Even if Tad was making metal, he was not to presume too much on his rank.

	"An' be's one thing more, Grammestor Tad: Common folk be's tells they shall all gots metal, too, when Great Grid be's done. But this musts not ta be! Do's all gots metal, where be's power? Where be's grammestors?"

	Weariness made Tad sag. He had no stomach for discussion, for explanation. He said, "I must go back to work now." As he turned and went to the lab, Eftor, Robard, Soby, and even Edder watched him go, silently; then they drew close, as men do who have heavy matters to talk about.

	Within two more months, Tad was beginning to wonder just how long he would have to put up with the tension surrounding him. The grumbling had increased, and now it was coming from all quarters. The Grammestors of Yarkrite saw great quantities of their substance vanishing in the direction of the Gridplain in Robard's territory, and, so far, they had seen no returns. What sort of business was it, they asked, in which a man pays a great price and receives nothing in return?

	That Tad could make metal, none doubted. There was what they were paying for! Why hadn't they been given their share? Was it possible that Robard and High Grammestor Maddan were simply going to share it between themselves, leaving the others, at most, only a small share?

	Other rumors reached Tad's ears—mostly through the officers of the surrounding guard. It was said that all the Grammestors, including Maddan, feared that the men of the Islands of Skawtrite, nearly a thousand miles to the north, were preparing an invasion fleet of several thousand catamarans to invade Yarkrite and take the Gridmetal. It was also said that the operative smiths, the actual working priesthood of the culture, were talking against Tad and his new metal.

	The number of men in the guard began to increase. Theoretically, the guard was under the direct control of High Grammestor Maddan; actually, since the various units were manned from the various Grammestors' own armies, their loyalty was divided. And each Grammestor was adding to the men in his own units, just in case.

	One by one, the other Grammestors put in appearances on the scene. Hadn't they the right to see where their contributions were going? And wasn't it natural that they wanted to be on hand to see with their own eyes the long-awaited day when the Great Grid began its operations? As for bringing their smiths along with them—why, who was better fitted to see the fair distribution of the metal when it finally came, singing through the stars, to materialize on the reforming platform?

	Tad just watched as each one pitched his skin tent with the others that dotted the hills surrounding the Gridplain, then he shrugged and went back o work. There were, he calculated, not more than three or four days' work left, and everything faded from his mind but getting the work done. Then he could contact Sirius V and the Hegemonic Government, and throw the whole problem in their collective lap. He wasn't a sociologist; the question of maintaining a feudal oligarchy in power, or creating the conditions for social breakdown were over his head. 

	Way over it.

	He worked feverishly, wanting only to get the task at hand finished. Very probably, the Government experts would know how to arrange things properly, to allow for slow and constructive change. And, anyway, no matter what happened, nothing could happen to Hogarth's that would be worse than what had happened to it during the past three hundred years. Surely it was time to force the retreat of barbarism and hunger.

	The unfinished part of the Grid was in the northwest corner. Tad was busied there, sunburned and sweating. Many times he had been tempted to strip to the waist, but he didn't want to reveal the gun still holstered inside his jacket. Edder, stripped almost naked, worked sullenly under his direction. Somehow, the circle of guards had closed in during recent days, so that the Gridland was no longer shut off. Thousands of people milled around just beyond the line of soldiers. Only the Grid itself and the production shed were still kept clear by the spearmen. Old Maddan, the High Grammestor, sat watchfully, just below where Tad was working.

	The weather turned chillier towards late morning. A light drizzle began to fall. Tad heard a sound, tiny but clear.

	He whirled around.

	The man who had made the sound was like any of the other operative smiths whose numbers had increased so much of late. His gloves and apron were not the ceremonial white lambskin ones of the Grammestors; they were worn and dirty from hard, constant usage. The man's hair was ragged, poorly cut. His clothes were not ragged, but they were worn and patched. In one hand he held the hammer he must have brought from his forge. And in the other was the piece of magnesium he had just broken from one of the ladders.

	Tad scrambled down the ladder nearest to him and walked towards the man, not quite sure in his own mind what he intended to do or say. As he approached, the smith looked at him, his face at once greedy and shamed. Then he lifted up his head, raised his eyebrows, and thrust out his chin, bold and defiant. In a second, he was gone into the crowd. No spearman tried to stop the passage of a smith.

	More annoyed than anything else, Tad turned to Maddan. "Look here, High Grammestor," he said, "fiat's got to be stopped at once."

	Maddan looked into the thick-pressing crowd where the vandal had vanished; he looked up and around at the intricate metal-work of the Grid. Tad's words focused the old man's agate eyes upon him. Automatically, almost obediently, the High Grammestor said, "Got to be stopped—"

	Tad heard someone move behind him, turned, and found himself face-to-face with Robard. The red, puffy eyes peered at him dimly, then swung to the Grid, and the dry lips opened, the gray and swollen tongue parted from teeth with a soft, sticky sound.

	Then, suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of shouts and scuffling and sharp blows. "Thieves! Thieves!" screamed a voice—Soby's? Edder's? "Arnat breaks is bond! Arnat! E steals the metal!"

	And Arnat's hoarse, raw voice: "Stands back! I sha' gets my due! Robard, the orse-son—"

	The crowd swayed, murmured, pressed in the retreating guards, who stared, openmouthed, over their shoulders. Robard's mouth opened— "Robard! Maddan! Stop them!" Tad cried.

	It was not so much a shout as a howl which broke from Robard then. Rage, desperation, eagerness. As Tad took a step forward, Robard's spear came swinging; the butt caught him below the breastbone, heavy and sickening. Tad doubled over and stumbled as Robard found words.

	"Guards! Men! My smiths, my smiths! Half a everything! It be's our metal! Kills the bond-breakers! Our seacoast they steals—they musts not ta steals our metal, too!"

	The light drizzle had become heavier, but no one heeded that. It seemed to Tad, fallen into the grass beneath the Grid, that this was somehow significant, but he was too sickened to think why. Anguished, he tried to rise. Half of everything. What was "everything"?

	And the growl of the mob as it surged and receded—serfs, armed men, orse-riders, headmen, uncertain what to do, where to begin—one word rising thick and ugly. "Metal!"

	Robard's voice: "Arnat gots no due ere! It be's paid is great-grandsir, time e steals our seacoast! E never gets no due, Arnat Orse-son! Baghan! A lie—our land—" And then, his voice a scream: "Our metal! Our metal! Ours!"

	Other voices then: "Grid and Gridland be's common'eld! Eftor's men! Rallys ere ta me!"

	"My smiths! Robard's smiths! Guards! Men a Robard! Ya gets half a everything f yasames! Now! Now!" Tad shouted through the pain-mist that filled his brain: "No! Not in this rain! No! Nonononono ..." But the voice sounded childishly weak in his ears.

	Do something! his mind shouted. Stop them!

	He forced himself to one knee, fumbled in his jacket, and drew his gun. A voice at his ear cried: "Metal!" and the gun was twisted violently from his grasp.

	His own thoughts poured like a torrent into Tad's mind. This is failure ... no Grid ... no contact with civilization ... they couldn't see, couldn't learn— And something hit the side of his head, felling him.

	"Metal!" the mob sang. "Metal!" With hammers, tongs and shears; with stones, clubs, bare hands, with teeth, even, they swarmed over the Grid.

	Wait! thought Tad. Don't! But this voice couldn't form the words.

	And it happened. The rainwater poured into the hundreds of cuts where heavy tools had smashed through the thin magnesium cladding of the sodium busbars, and, almost simultaneously, hundreds of volcanoes of spewing, popping, roaring yellow flame covered the Grid. In the oxygen-rich air, the glaring flames spread rapidly and hotly, becoming blindingly white as the magnesium, too, took fire.

	The sounds of the mob had changed in a fraction of a second, becoming screams of pain and terror. A white, alkali smoke made the air bitterly pungent and choking. Someone fell heavily on Tad, and he felt his leg bone snap.

	Eftor's voice came, half astonished, half terrified: "It burns! Metal na burns, but this does!" And then he screamed.

	Two men seized Tad and tugged at him. The pain in his broken leg seared like the fire overhead. He screamed, tried to struggle; but in a second or two they had carried him out from beneath the edge of the now-blazing Grid, and into the crowd of sometime onlookers who were now fleeing from the blue-white actinic glare of the flaming metal. Tad twisted his head to look at the Grid.

	The flames of burning hydrogen were dancing high over the Grid, but the platform itself was a white, blinding flare that was almost impossible to look at. The mob's scream was like that of a dying animal. Those who had climbed the Grid were trying to get to the ground, and those who still could were trying to get out from under it. Some of those on top made it to the edge, others fell through the holes that were burning and melting in the once-tight mesh. They screamed again while fiery gobbets of molten sodium dribbled and dropped around and over them.

	Tad heard Robard cry out once more, his voice hoarse and agonized.

	"Is there no help for the widow's son?"

	The answer came in a rain of molten metal, which cut off his cry. 

	There was no help.

-

	The rain was heavy—very heavy. The water poured onto Tad's face. A voice said: "Be's enough. Is eyes moves." The water stopped.

	Tad blinked. A ring of faces looked down at him, solicitously. Maddan's was among them. Gentle hands assisted Tad as he struggled to sit up. His leg, he saw, was splinted. He was grateful for the wetness of his face; it concealed the tears he felt running.

	There was still a white-and-yellow glare somewhere to the right, and he turned his head to look. Beyond the crest of a nearby hill, a column of white smoke and dancing, sodium-yellow hydrogen flame was lit from beneath by the bluish whiteness of burning magnesium.

	"I've failed," Tad muttered. "Maddan, you were right. I thought I knew everything ... I thought they'd know better ... I thought they'd realize ... I thought—"

	"Orse-son, baghan, fools!" Maddan growled, watching the distant holocaust. "Robard, Nothek, Arnat, Eftor, Govin, Perless—" He looked down at Tad, his face troubled and grim. "All be's good men in they own ways, Tad—remember that." Then he looked again at the fire. "But they be's fools; they cans not ta learns.

	"Smiths, too," he went on. "Dead because they be's fools."

	He glanced around at the five men who stood with him. "Even my own men leaves me ta take metal. Five only who be's not fools."

	"Metal fire be's hot," said one of the men, staring at the incandescent column with glassy eyes.

	"Ye'," said another. "Be's roasts even men who fall outside Gridplain, if they cans not ta moves fast enough."

	Tad closed his eyes and tried to blot out the picture that the man's words had brought to his mind. He had failed—failed horribly. He, a man from the civilized Old Worlds, a Technician Beta-Fourth, had failed because he had not listened to a ... a witch-doctor ... an unlettered barbarian.

	He must have said something aloud, for Maddan's voice cut in: "Na, na, young worshipful. Ya faileds not. It ads t' appen so. Grammestors and smiths who dies be's dead fro' own greed. They as be's still alive, they be's alive because they be's not fools, but wise. Now I cans ta make new Grammestors, as is right and duty a High Grammestor." He chuckled without humor. "An' Grammestors who be's not dead be's forfeit bonds for breaking a peace. For a while, I be's in control a Grand Chapter; I cans ta make changes as has needs ta be made for a underdyear or more."

	So that was it, Tad thought bitterly. The old villain allowed the Grid to be burned to further his own political ambitions—to increase his power—

	But that didn't make sense, either, he realized suddenly. The High Grammestor couldn't have stopped the riot, even if he'd wanted to. And he certainly hadn't instigated it. Then what—?

	"So you've got your power now," he said, watching Maddan's face carefully.

	"Ye', ye', I gots it. An' I makes changes—changes ta elp Ogarth. But it be's power I cans not ta holds for long. Yarkrite be's but one island, an' I cans not ta elp other islands on Ogarth, not by mysames. I cans not ta makes other islands ta use metal ta fertilize land; I cans not ta stops all Ogarth from dying. Not without Great Grid."

	He looked down at Tad, his wise old face smiling faintly. "Na, ya has not failed. Now we goes on ta build a Great Grid that sha' not burn."

	Tad brushed his face with his sleeve. "But ... how—?" He blinked his eyes, as if trying to get Maddan's face in perfect focus would reveal the thoughts that were in that enigmatic mind. "Is my ... my power pack—"

	Maddan shook his head. "Na, na. All that be's gone—ruined in fire. Ya's smithy burns there, too. But we needs 'em not."

	"But I can't make sodium or magnesium without—"

	"Ya needs 'em not, I says," Maddan interrupted. "Now I has control a Grand Chapter, I has control a metal, too. There be's enough copper left ta build Grid, time ya shows us ow. Every pig a it comes out a treasure-oles when Maddan says. Too bad sa many gots ta die, but there be's a new life in sight, as the faith we kepts tolds tell. Metal for all, food for all, new lore for all. Three underdyears we lives like beasts, but that ends now.

	"Tomorra, we starts ta works again."

	Slowly, carefully the men lifted Tad onto a litter. Maddan covered- him with his own cloak.

	He knew what would happen, Tad thought dazedly. He knew he couldn't stop it; they wouldn't have let him. But he knew how to use the inevitable.

	The widow's son was going to help himself.

The End