This was a question she usually found wise to evade. She tilted her head sidewise, smiling, a mannerism which gave her a wild and reckless look. "How old do you think I am?"

"Sixteen or seventeen."

"That's close enough."

He nodded. "Close enough. What's your name?"

"Jean Parlier."

"Who do you live with?"

"No one. i live alone."

"Father? Mother?"

"Dead."

"Grandparents? Guardian?" "I'm alone."

He nodded. "Any trouble with the law on that account?" She considered him warily. "No."

He moved his head enough to send a lank running up the feather of smoke. "Take off your clothes." "Why?"

"It's a quick way to check your qualifications." "Well—yes. In a way I guess it is . . . Physical or moral?"

He made no reply, sat looking at her impassively, the gray skein of smoke rising past his face.

She shrugged, put her hands to her sides, to her neck, to her waist, to her back, to her legs, and stood without clothes.

He put the cigarette to his mouth, puffed, sat up, stubbed it out, rose to his feet, walked slowly forward.

He's trying to scare me, she thought, and smiled quietly to herself. He could try.

He stopped two feet away, stood looking down into her eyes. "You really want a million dollars?"

"That's why I'm here."

"You took the advertisement in the literal sense of the words?"

"Is there any other way?"

"You might have construed the language as—metaphor, hyperbole."

She grinned, showing her sharp white teeth. "I don't know what those words mean. Anyway I'm here. If the advertisement was only intended for you to look at me naked, I'll leave."

His expression did not change. Peculiar, thought Jean, how his body moved, his head turned, but his eyes always seemed fixed. He said as if he had not heard her, "Not too many girls have applied."

"That doesn't concern me. I want a million dollars. What is it? Blackmail? Impersonation?"

He passed over her question. "What would you do with a million if you had it?"

"I don't know ... Ill worry about that when I get it. Have you checked my qualifications? I'm cold."

He turned quickly, strode to the couch, seated himself. She slipped into her clothes, came over to the couch, took a tentative seat facing him.

He said dryly, "Ybu fill the qualifications almost too well!"

"How so?"

"It's unimportant."

Jean tilted her head, laughed. She looked like a healthy, very pretty high-school girl who might be the better for more sunshine. "Tell me what I'm to do to earn a million dollars."

"You're to marry a wealthy young man, who suffers from —let us call it, an incurable disease. When he dies, his property will be yours. You will sell his property to me for a million dollars."

"Evidently he's worth more than a million dollars."

He was conscious of the questions she did not ask. "There's somewhere near a billion involved."

"What land of disease does he have? I might catch it myself."

"I'll take care of the disease end. You won't catch it if you keep your nose clean."

"Oh—oh, I see—tell me more about him. Is he handsome? Big? Strong? I might feel sorry if he died."

"He's eighteen years old. His main interest is collecting." Sardonically: "He likes zoology too. He's an eminent zoologist. His name is Earl Abercrombie. He owns—" he gestured up—"Abercrombie Station."

Jean stared, then laughed feebly. "That's a hard way to make a million dollars . . . Earl Abercrombie . . ." "Squeamish?"

"Not when I'm awake. But I do have nightmares." "Make up your mind."

She looked modesdy to where she had folded her hands in her lap. "A million isn't a very large cut out of a billion."

He surveyed her with .something like approval. "No. It isn t.

She rose to her feet, slim as a dancer. "All you do is sign a check. I have to marry him, get in bed with him."

"They don't use beds on Abercrombie Station."

"Since he lives on Abercrombie, he might not be interested in me."

"Earl is different," said the quiet man. "Earl likes gravity girls."

*Tou must realize that once he dies, you'd be forced to accept whatever I chose to give you. Or the property might be put in charge of a trustee."

"Not necessarily. The Abercrombie Civil Regulation allows property to be controlled by anyone sixteen or over. Earl is eighteen. He exercises complete control over the Station, subject to a few unimportant restrictions. Ill take care of that end." He went to the door, slid it open. "Hammond."

The man with the long face came wordlessly to the door.

"I've got her. Send the others home."

He closed the door, turned to Jean. "I want you to have dinner with me." -

"I'm not dressed for dinner."

"I'll send up the couturier. Try to be ready in an hour."

He left the room. The door closed. Jean stretched, threw back her head, opened her mouth in a soundless exultant laugh. She raised her arms over her head, took a step forward, turned a supple cart-wheel across the rug, bounced to her feet beside the window.

She knelt, rested her head on her hands, looked across Metropolis. Dusk had come. The great gray-golden sky filled three-quarters of her vision. A thousand feet below was the wan gray, lavender and black crumble of surface buildings, the pallid roadways streaming with golden motes. To the right, aircraft slid silently along force-guides to the mountain suburbs—tired normal people bound to pleasant normal homes. What would they think if they knew that she, Jean Parlier, was watching? For instance, the man who drove that shiny Skyfarer with the pale green chevrets . . . She built a picture of him: pudgy, forehead creased with lines of worry. He'd be hurrying home to his wife, who would listen tolerantly while he boasted or grumbled. Cattle-women, cow-women, thought Jean without rancor. What man could subdue her? Where was the man who was wild and hard and bright enough? . . . Remembering her new job, she grimaced. Mrs. Earl Abercrombje. She looked up into the sky. The stars were not yet out and the lights of Abercrombie Station could not be seen.

A million dollars, think of itl "What will you do with a million dollars?" her new employer had asked her, and now that she returned to it, the idea was uncomfortable, like a lump in her throat.

What would she do with a million dollars?

Idly she tried to picture herself. How would she look? How would she feel? How would she . . . Her mind moved away from the subject, recoiled with the faintest trace of anger, as if it were a subject not to be touched upon. "Rats," said Jean. "Time to worry about it after I get it ... A million dollars. Not too large a cut out of a billion, actually. Two million would be better."

Her eyes followed a slim red airboat diving along a sharp curve into the parking area: a sparkling new Marshall Moon-chaser. Now there was something she wanted. It would be one of her first purchases.

The door slid open. Hammond the doorkeeper looked briefly in. Then the couturier entered, pushing his wheeled kit before him, a slim little blond man with rich topaz eyes. The door closed.

Jean turned away from the window. The couturier—Andre was the name stencilled on the enamel of the box-spoke for more light, walked around her, darting glances up and down her body.

"Yes," he muttered, pressing his lips in and out. "Ah, yes ... Now what does the lady have in mind?"

"A dinner gown, I suppose."

He nodded. "Mr. Fotheringay mentioned formal evening wear."

So that was his name—Fotheringay.

André snapped up a screen. "Observe, if you will, a few of my effects; perhaps there is something to please you."

Models appeared on the screen, stepping forward, smiling, turning away.

Jean said, "Something like that."

André made a gesture of approval, snapped his fingers. "Orare-Lei. Mademoiselle has good taste. And now we shall see ... If mademoiselle will let me help her. . . ."

He deftly unzipped her garments, laid them on the couch.

"First—we refresh ourselves." He selected a tool from his Idt, and holding her wrist between delicate thumb and forefinger, sprayed her arms with cool mist, then warm perfumed air. Her skin tingled, fresh, invigorated.

André tapped his chin. "Now, the foundation."

She stood, eyes half-closed, while he busded around her, striding off, making whispered comments, quick gestures with significance only to himself.

He sprayed her with gray-green web, touched and pulled as the strands set. He adjusted knurled knobs at the ends of a flexible tube, pressed it around her waist, swept it away, and it trailed shining black-green silk. He artfully twisted and wound his tube. He put the frame back in the kit, pulled, twisted, pinched, while the silk set.

He sprayed her with wan white, quickly jumped forward, folded, shaped, pinched, pulled, bunched and the stuff fell in twisted bands from her shoulders and into a full rusding skirt.

"Now—gauntlets." He covered her arms and hands with warm black-green pulp which set into spangled velvet, adroitly cut with scissors to bare the back of her hand.

"Slippers," Black satin, webbed with emerald-green phosphorescence.

"Now—the ornaments." He hung a red bauble from her right ear, slipped a cabochon ruby on her right hand.

"Scent—a trace. The Levailleur, indeed." He flicked her with an odor suggestive of a Central Asia flower patch.

"And mademoiselle is dressed. And may I say—" he bowed with a flourish—"most exquisitely beautiful."

He manipulated his cart, one side fell away. A mirror uncoiled upward.

Jean inspected herself. Vivid naiad. When she acquired that million dollars—two million would be better—she'd put André on her permanent payroll.

André was still muttering compliments. "—Elan supreme. She is magic. Most striking. Eyes will turn. ..."

The door slid back. Fotheringay came into the room. André bowed low, clasped his hands.

Fotheringay glanced at her. "You're ready. Good. Come along."

Jean thought, we might as well get this straight right now.

"Where?"

He frowned slightly, stood aside while André pushed his cart out.

Jean said, "I came here of my own free will. I walked in this room under my own power. Both times I knew where I was going. Now you say 'Come with me.' First I want to know where. Then 111 decide whether or not 111 come."

"You don't want a million dollars very badly."

"Two million. I want it badly enough to waste an afternoon investigating . . . But—if I don't get it today, 111 get it tomorrow. Or next week. Somehow 111 get it; a long time ago I made my mind up. So?" She performed an airy curtsey.

His pupils contracted. He said in an even voice, "Very well. Two million. I am now taking you to dinner on the roof, where I will give you your instructions."

They dbifted under the dome, in a greenish plastic bubble. Below them spread the commercial fantasy of an out-world landscape: gray sward; gnarled red and green trees casting dramatic black shadows; a pond of fluorescent green liquid; panels of exotic blossoms; beds of fungus.

The bubble drifted easily, apparently at random, now high under the near-invisible dome, now low under the foliage. Successive courses appeared from the center of the table, along with chilled wine and frosted punch.

It was wonderful and lavish, thought Jean. But why should Fotheringay spend his money on her? Perhaps he entertained romantic plans . . . She dallied with the idea, inspected him covertly . . . The idea lacked conviction. He seemed to be engaging in none of the usual gambits. He neither tried to fascinate her with his charm, nor swamp her with synthetic masculinity. Much as it irritated Jean to admit it, he appeared—indifferent.

Jean compressed her lips. The idea was disconcerting. She essayed a slight smile, a side glance up under lowered lashes.

"Save it," said Fotheringay. "You'll need it all when you get up to Abercrombie."

Jean returned to her dinner. After a minute she said calmly, "I was—curious."

"Now you know."

Jean thought to tease him, draw him out. "Know what?"

"Whatever it was you were curious about."

"Pooh. Men are mostly alike. They all have the same button. Push it, they all jump the same direction."

Fotheringay frowned, glanced at her under narrowed eyes. "Maybe you aren't so precocious after all."

Jean became tense. In a curious indefinable way, the subject was very important, as if survival were linked with confidence in her own sophistication and flexibility. "What do you mean?"

"You make the assumption most pretty girls make," he said with a trace of scorn. "I thought you were smarter than that."

Jean frowned. There had been little abstract thinking in her background. "Well, I've never had it work out differently. Although I'm willing to admit there're exceptions . . . It's a kind of game. I've never lost. If I'm kidding myself, it hasn't made much difference so far."

Fotheringay relaxed. "You've been lucky."

Jean stretched out her arms, arched her body, smiled as if at a secret. "Call it luck."

"Luck won't work with Earl Abercrombie."

"You're the one who used the word luck. I think it's, well —ability."

"You'll have to use your brains too." He hesitated then said, "Actually, Earl likes—odd things." Jean sat looking at him, frowning.

He said coolly, "You're making up your mind now best to ask the question 'What's odd about me?' "

Jean snapped, "I don't need you to tell me what's odd about me. I know what it is myself."

Fotheringay made no comment.

"I'm completely on my own," said Jean. "There's not a soul in all the human universe that I care two pins for. I do just exactly as I please." She watched him carefully. He nodded indifferendy. Jean quelled her exasperation, leaned back in her chair, studied him as if he were in a glass case ... A strange young man. Did he ever smile? She thought of the Capellan Fibrates who by popular superstition were able to fix themselves along a man's spinal column and control his intelligence. Fotheringay displayed a coldness strange enough to suggest such a possession ... A Capellan could manipulate but one hand at a time. Fotheringay held a knife in one hand, a fork in the other and moved both hands together. So much for that.

He said quietly, "I watched your hands, too."

Jean threw back her head and laughed—a healthy adolescent laugh. Fotheringay watched her without discernible expression.

She said, "Actually, you'd like to know about me, but you're too stiff-necked to ask."

"You were born at Angel City on Codiron," said Fotheringay. "Your mother abandoned you in a tavern, a gambler named Joe Parlier took care of you until you were ten, when you killed him and three other .men and stowed away on the Gray Line Packet Bucyrus. You were taken to the Waifs Home at Paie on Bella's Pride. You ran away and the Superintendent was found dead . . . Shall I go on? There's five more years of it."

Jean sipped her wine, nowise abashed. "You've worked fast . . . But you've misrepresented. You said 'There's five years more of it, shall-1 go on?' as if you were able to go on. You don't know anything about the next five years."

Fotheringay's face changed by not a flicker. He said as if she had not spoken, "Now listen carefully. This is what you'll have to look out for."

"Go ahead. I'm all ears." She leaned back in her chair. A clever technique, ignoring an unwelcome situation as if it never existed. Of course, to carry it off successfully, a certain temperament was required. A cold fish like Foth-eringay managed very well.

"Tonight a man named Webbard meets us here. He is chief steward at Abercrombie Station. I happen to be able to influence certain of his actions. He will take you up with him to Abercrombie and install you as a servant in the Abercrombie private chambers."

Jean wrinkled her nose. "Servant? Why can't I go to Abercrombie as a paying guest?"

"It wouldn't be natural. A girl like you would go up to Capricorn or Verge. Earl Abercrombie is extremely suspicious. He'd be certain to fight shy of you. His mother, old Mrs. Clara, watches him pretty closely, and keeps drilling into his head the idea that ail the Abercrombie girls are after his money. As a servant you will have opportunity to meet him in intimate circumstances. He rarely leaves his study; he's absorbed in his collecting."

"My word," murmured Jean. "What does he collect?"

"Everything you can think of," said Fotheringay, moving his hps upward in a quick grimace, almost a smile. "I understand from Webbard, however, that he is rather romantic, and has carried on a number of flirtations among the girls of the station."

Jean screwed up her mouth in fastidious scorn. Fotheringay watched her impassively.

"When do I—commence?"

"Webbard goes up on the supply barge tomorrow. You'll go with him."

A whisper of sound from the buzzer. Fotheringay touched the button. "Yes?"

"Mr. Webbard for you, sir."

Fotheringay directed the bubble down to the landing stage.

Webbard was waiting, the fattest man Jean had ever seen.

The plaque on the door read, Richard Mycroft, Attomey-at-Law. Somewhere far back down the years, someone had said in Jean's hearing that Richard Mycroft was a good attorney.

The receptionist was a dark woman about thirty-five, with a direct penetrating eye. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No," said Jean. "I'm in rather a hurry."

The receptionist hesitated a moment, then bent over the communicator. "A young lady—Miss Jean Parlier—to see you. New business."

"Very well."

The receptionist nodded to the door. "You can go in," she said shortly.

She doesn't like me, thought Jean. Because I'm what she was and what she wants to be again.

Mycroft was a square man with a pleasant face. Jean constructed a wary defense against him. If you like someone and they knew it, they felt obligated to advise and interfere. She wanted no advice, no interference. She wanted two million dollars.

"Well, young lady," said Mycroft "What can I do for you?"

He's treating me like a child, thought Jean. Maybe I look like a child to him. She said, "It's a matter of advice. I don't know much about fees. I can afford to pay you a hundred dollars. When you advise me a hundred dollars worth, let me know and 111 go away."

"A hundred dollars buys a lot of advice," said Mycroft. "Advice is cheap."

"Not from a lawyer."

Mycroft became practical. "What are your troubles?" "It's understood that this is all confidential?" "Certainly.". Mycroft's smile froze into a polite grimace. "It's nothing illegal—so far as I'm concerned—but I don't

want you passing out any quiet hints to—people that might be interested."

Mycroft straightened himself behind his desk. "A lawyer is expected to respect the confidence of his client."

"Okay . . . Well, it's like this." She told him of Fotheringay, of Abercrombie Station and Earl Abercrombie. She said that Earl Abercrombie was sick with an incurable disease. She made no mention of Fotheringay's convictions on that subject. It was a matter she herself kept carefully brushed out of her mind. Fotheringay had hired her. He told her what to do, told her that Earl Abercrombie was sick. That was good enough for her. If she had asked too many questions, found that things were too nasty even for her stomach, Fotheringay would have found another girl less inquisitive . . . She skirted the exact nature of Earl's disease. She didn't actually know, herself. She didn't want to know.

Mycroft listened attentively, saying nothing.

"What I want to know is," said Jean, "is the wife sure to inherit on Abercrombie? I don't want to go to a lot of trouble for nothing. And after all Earl is under twenty-one; I thought that in the event of his death it was best to— well, make sure of everything first."

For a moment Mycroft made no move, but sat regarding her quietly. Then he tamped tobacco into a pipe.

"Jean," lie said, "I'll give you some advice. It's free. No strings on it."

"Don't bother," said Jean. "I don't want the kind of advice that's free. I want the kind I have to pay for."

Mycroft grimaced. "You're a remarkably wise child."

"I've had to be . . . Call me a child, if you wish."

"Just what will you do with a million dollars? Or two million, I understand it to be?"

Jean stared. Surely the answer was obvious ... Or was it? When she tried to find an answer, nothing surfaced.

"Well," she said vaguely, "I'd like an airboat, some nice clothes, and maybe ..." In her mind's-eye she suddenly saw herself surrounded by friends. Nice people, like Mr. Mycroft.

"If I were a psychologist and not a lawyer," said Mycroft, "I'd say you wanted your mother and father more than you wanted two million dollars."

Jean became very heated. "No, no! I don't want them at all. They're dead." As far as she was concerned they were dead. They had died for her when they left her on Joe Parlier's pool-table in the old Aztec Tavem.

Jean said indignantly, "Mr. Mycroft, I know you mean well, but tell me what I want to know."

"Ill tell you," said Mycroft, "because if I didn't, someone else would. Abercrombie property, if I'm not mistaken, is regulated by its own civil code . . . Let's see"—he twisted in his chair, pushed buttons on his desk.

On the screen appeared the index to the Central Law Library. Mycroft made further selections, narrowing down selectively. A few seconds later he had the information. "Property control begins at sixteen. Widow inherits at minimum fifty percent; the entire estate unless specifically stated otherwise in the will."

"Good," said Jean. She jumped to her feet "That's what I wanted to make sure of."

Mycroft asked. "When do you leave?"

"This afternoon."

"I don't need to tell you that the idea behind the scheme is—not moral."

"Mr. Mycroft, you're a dear. But I don't have any morals."

He tilted his head, shrugged, puffed on his pipe. "Are

you sure?"

"Well—yes." Jean considered a moment "I suppose so. Do you want me to go into details?"

"No. I think what I meant to say was, are you sure you know what you want out of life?"

"Certainly. Lots of money."

Mycroft grinned. "That's really not a good answer. 'What will you buy with your money?"

Jean felt irrational anger rising in her throat. "Oh—lots of things." She rose to her feet. "Just what do I owe you, Mr. Mycroft?"

"Oh-ten dollars. Give it to Ruth."

"Thank you, Mr. Mycroft." She stalked out of his office. As she marched down the corridor she was surprised to find that she was angry with herself as well as irritated with

Mr. Mycroft ... He had no right making people wonder about themselves. It wouldn't be so bad if she weren't wondering a little already.

But this was all nonsense. Two million dollars was two million dollars. When she was rich, she'd call on Mr. Mycroft and ask him if honesdy he didn't think it was worth a few little lapses.

And today—up to Abercrombie Station. She suddenly became excited.

Ill

The pilot of the Abercrombie supply barge was emphatic. "No sir, I think you're making a mistake, nice little girl like you.

He was a chunky man in his thirties, hard-bitten and positive. Sparse blond hair crusted his scalp, deep lines gave his mouth a cynical slant. Webbard, the Abercrombie chief steward, was billeted astern, in the special handling locker. The usual webbings were inadequate to protect his corpulence; he floated chin-deep in a tankful of emulsion the same specific gravity as his body.

There was no passenger cabin and Jean had slipped into the seat beside the pilot. She wore a modest white frock, a white toque, a gray and black striped jacket.

The pilot had few good words for Abercrombie Station. "Now it's what I call a shame, taking a lad like you to serve the likes of them . . . Why don't they get one of their own kind? Surely both sides would be the happier."

Jean said innocently, "I'm going up for only just a little bit"

"So you think. It's catching. In a year you'll be like the rest of them. The air alone is enough to sicken a person, rich and sweet like olive oil. Me, I never set foot outside the barge unless I can't help it."

"Do you think 111 be—safe?" She raised her lashes, turned him her reckless sidelong look.

He licked his lips,^N moved in his seat "Oh, you'll be safe enough," he muttered. "At least from them that's been there awhile. You might have to duck a few just fresh from Earth . . . After they've lived on the station a bit their ideas change and they wouldn't spit on the best part of an Earth girl."

"Hmmph." Jean compressed her lips. Earl Abercrombie had been bom on the station.

"But I wasn't thinking so much of that," said the pilot It was hard, he thought, talking straight sense to a kid so young and inexperienced. "I meant in that atmosphere youll be apt to let yourself go. Pretty soon you'll look like the rest of 'em—never want to leave. Some aren't able to leave—couldn't stand it back on Earth if they wanted to."

"Oh—I don't think so. Not in my case."

"It's catching," said the pilot vehemently. "Look, kid, I know. I've ferried out to all the stations, I've seen 'em come and go. Each station has its own kind of weirdness, and you can't keep away from it." He chuckled self-consciously. "Maybe that's why I'm so batty myself . . . Now take Madeira Station. Gay. Frou-frou." He made a mincing motion with his fingers. "That's Madeira. You wouldn't know much about that . . . But take Balchester Aerie, take Merlin Dell, take the Starhome—"

"Surely, some are just pleasure resorts?"

The pilot grudgingly admitted that of the twenty-two resort satellites, fully half were as ordinary as Miami Beach. "But the others—oh, Moses I" He rolled his eyes back. "And Abercrombie is the worst."

There was silence in the cabin. Earth was a monstrous, green, blue, white and black ball over Jean's shoulder. The sun made a furious hole in the sky below. Ahead were the stars—and a set of blinking blue and red lights.

"Is that Abercrombie?"

"No, that's the Masonic Temple. Abercrombie is on out a ways. . . ." He looked diffidently at her from the comer of his eyes. "Now—look! I don't want you to think I'm fresh. Or maybe I do. But if you're hard up for a job-why don't you come back to Earth with me? I got a pretty nice shack in Long Beach—nothing fancy—but it's on the beach, and it'll be better than working for a bunch of sideshow freaks."

Jean said absently, "No thanks." The pilot pulled in his chin, pulled his elbows close against his body, glowered.

An hour passed. From behind came a rattle, and a small panel slid back. Webbard's pursy face showed through. The barge was coasting on free momentum, gravity was negated. "How much longer to the station?"

"It's just ahead. Half an hour, more or less, and well be fished up tight and right." Webbard grunted, withdrew.

Yellow and green lights winked ahead. "That's Abercrom-bie," said the pilot. He reached out to a handle. "Brace yourself." He pulled. Pale blue check-jets streamed out ahead.

From behind came a thump and an angry cursing. The pilot grinned. "Got him good." The jets roared a minute, died. "Every trip it's the same way. Now in a minute hell stick his head through the panel and bawl me out."

The portal slid back. Webbard showed his furious face. "Why in thunder don't you warn me before you check? I just now took a blow that might have hurt mel You're not much of a pilot, risking injuries of that sortr

The pilot said in a droll voice, "Sony sir, sorry indeed. Won't happen again."

"It had better notl If it does, IH make it my business to see that you're discharged."

The portal snapped shut. "Sometimes I get him better than others," said the pilot. "This was a good one, I could tell by the thump."

He shifted in his seat, put his arm around Jean's shoulders, pulled her against him. "Let's have a little kiss, before we fish home."

Jean leaned forward, reached out her arm. He saw her face coming toward him—bright wonderful face, onyx, pale rose, ivory, smiling hot with life . . . She reached past him, thrust the check valve. Four jets thrashed forward. The barge jerked. The pilot fell into the instrument panel, comical surprise written on his face.

From behind came a heavy resonant thump.

The pilot pulled himself back into his seat, knocked back the check valve. Blood oozed from his chin, forming a little red wen. Behind them the portal snapped open. Webbard's face, black with rage, looked through.

When he had finally finished, and the portal had closed, the pilot looked at Jean, who was sitting quiedy in her seat, the comers of her mouth drawn up dreamily.

He said from deep in his throat, "If I had you alone, I'd beat you half to death."

Jean drew her knees up under her chin, clasped her arms around, looked silently ahead.

Abercrombie Station had been built to the Fitch cylinder-design: a power and service core, a series of.circular decks, a transparent sheath. To the original construction a number of modifications and annexes had been added. An outside deck circled the cylinder, sheet steel to hold the magnetic grapples of small boats, cargo binds, magnetic shoes, anything which was to be fixed in place for a greater or lesser time. At each end of the cylinder, tubes connected to dependent constructions. The first, a sphere, was the private residence of the Abercrembies. The second, a cylinder, rotated at sufficient speed to press the water it contained evenly over its inner surface to a depth of ten feet; this was the station swimming pool, a feature found on only three of the resort satellites.

The supply barge inched close to the deck, bumped. Four men attached constrictor tackle to rings in the hull, heaved the barge along to the supply port. The barge settled into its socket, grapples shot home, the ports sucked open.

Chief Steward Webbard was still smouldering, but now a display of anger was beneath his dignity. Disdaining magnetic shoes, he pulled himself to the entrance, motioned to Jean. "Bring your baggage."

Jean went to her neat little trunk, jerked it into the air, found herself floundering helpless in the middle of the cargo space. Webbard impatiendy returned with magnetic clips for her shoes, and helped her float the trunk into the station.

She was breathing different, rich, air. The barge had smelled of ozone, grease, hemp sacking, but the station . . . Without consciously trying to identify the odor, Jean thought of waffles with butter and syrup mixed with talcum powder.

Webbard floated in front of her, an imposing spectacle.

His fat no longer hung on him in folds; it ballooned out in an even perimeter. His face was smooth as a watermelon, and it seemed as if his features were incised, carved, rather than molded. He focused his eyes at a point above her dark head. "We had better come to an understanding, young lady."

"Certainly, Mr. Webbard."

"As a favor to my friend, Mr. Fbtheringay, I have brought you here to work. Beyond this original and singular act, I am no longer responsible. I am not your sponsor. Mr. Foth-eringay recommended you highly, so see that you give satisfaction. Your immediate superior will be Mrs. Blaiskell, and you must obey her implicitly. We have very strict rules here at Abercrombie—fair treatment and good pay—but you must earn it. Your work must speak for itself, and you can expect no special favors." He coughed. "Indeed, if I may say so, you are fortunate in finding employment here; usually we hire people more of our own sort, it makes for harmonious conditions."

Jean waited with demurely bowed head. Webbard spoke on further, detailing specific warnings, admonitions, injunctions.

Jean nodded dutifully. There was no point antagonizing pompous old Webbard. And Webbard thought that here was a respectful young lady, thin and very young and with a peculiar frenetic gleam in her eye, but sufficientiy impressed by his importance . . . Good coloring too. Pleasant features. If she only could manage two hundred more pounds of flesh on her bones, she might have appealed to his grosser nature.

"This way then," said Webbard.

He floated ahead, and by some magnificent innate power continued to radiate the impression of inexorable dignity even while plunging head-first along the corridor.

Jean came more sedately, walking on her magnetic clips, pushing the trunk ahead as easily as if it had been a paper bag.

They reached the central core, and Webbard, after looking back over his bulging shoulders, launched himself up the shaft

Panes in the wall of the core permitted a view of the various halls, lounges, refectories, salons. Jean stopped by a room decorated with red plush drapes and marble statuary. She stared, first in wonder, then in amusement.

Webbard called impatiendy, "Come along now, miss, come along."

Jean pulled herself away from the pane. "I was watching the guests. They looked like—" she broke into a sudden giggle.

Webbard frowned, pursed his lips. Jean thought he was about to demand the grounds for her merriment, but evidently he felt it beneath his dignity. He called, "Come along now, I can spare you only a moment."

She turned one last glance into the hall, and now she laughed aloud.

Fat women, like bladder-fish in an aquarium Tank. Fat women,, round and tender as yellow peaches. Fat women, miraculously easy and agile in the absence of gravity.

The occasion seemed to be an afternoon musicale. The hall was crowded and heavy with balls of pink flesh draped in blouses and pantaloons of white, pale blue and yellow.

The current Abercrombie fashion seemed designed to accent the round bodies. Flat bands like Sam Browne belts molded the breasts down and out, under the arms. The hair was parted down the middle, skinned smoothly back to a small roll at the nape of the neck. Flesh, bulbs of tender flesh, smooth shiny balloons. Tiny twitching features, dancing fingers and toes, eyes and lips roguishly painted. On Earth any one of these women would have sat immobile, a pile of sagging sweating tissue. At Abercrombie Station—Adipose Alley," so called along the Pipeline—they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs, and their faces and bodies were smooth as butter-balls.

"Come, come, cornel" barked Webbard. "There's no loitering at Abercrombie!"

Jean restrained the impulse to slide her trunk up the core against Webbard's rotund buttocks, a tempting target

He waited for her at the far end of the corridor.

"Mr. Webbard," she asked thoughtfully, "how much does Earl Abercrombie weigh?"

Webbard tilted his head back, glared reprovingly down his nose. "Such intimacies, miss, are not considered polite conversation here."

Jean said, "I merely wondered if he were as—well, imposing as you are."

Webbard sniffed. "I couldn't answer you. Mr. Abercrom-bie is a person of great competence. His—presence is a matter you must learn not to discuss. It's not proper, not done."

"Thank you, Mr. Webbard," said Jean meekly.

Webbard said, "You'll catch on. You'll make a good girl yet. Now, through the tube, and 111 take you to Mrs. Blais-kell."

Mrs. Blaiskell was short and squat as a kumquat. Her hair was steel-gray, and skinned back modishly to the roll behind her neck. She wore tight black rompers, the uniform of the Abercrombie servants, so Jean was to learn.

Jean suspected that she made a poor impression on Mrs. Blaiskell. She felt the snapping gray eyes search her from head to foot, and kept her own modestly down-cast.

Webbard explained that Jean was to be-trained as a maid, and suggested that Mrs. Blaiskell use her in the Pleasaunce and the bedrooms.

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded. "Good idea. The young master is peculiar, as everyone knows, but he's been pestering the girls lately and interrupting their duties; wise to have one in there such as her—no offense, miss, I just mean it's the gravity that does it—who won't be so apt to catch his eye."

Webbard signed to her, and they floated off a little distance, conversing in low whispers.

Jean's wide mouth quivered at the comers. Old fools!

Five minutes passed. Jean began to fidget. Why didn't they do something? Take her somewhere. She suppressed her restlessness. Lifel How good, how zestfull She wondered, will I feel this same joy when I'm twenty? When I'm thirty, forty? She drew back the corners of her mouth. Of course I will. I'll never let myself change . . . But life must be used to its best. Every flicker of ardor and excitement must be wrung free and tasted. She grinned. Here she floated, breathing the over-ripe air of Abercrombie Station. In a way it was adventure. It paid well—two million dollars, and only for seducing an eighteen-year-old boy. Seducing him, marrying him—what difference? Of course he was Earl Abercrombie, and if he were as imposing as Mr. Webbard . . . She considered Webbard's great body in wry speculation. Oh well, two million was two million. If things got too bad, the price might go up. Ten million, perhaps. Not too large a cut out of a billion.

Webbard departed without a word, twitching himself easily back down the core.

"Come," said Mrs. Blaiskell. "Ill show you your room. You can rest and tomorrow 111 take you around."

Mhs. Blaiskell stood by while Jean fitted herself into black rompers, frankly critical. "Lord have mercy, but you mustn't pinch in the waist sol You're rachity and thin to starvation now, poor child; you mustn't point it up sol Perhaps we can find a few air-floats to fill you out; not that it's essential, Lord knows, since you're but a dust-maid; still it always improves a household to have a staff of pretty women, and young Earl, I will say this for him and all his oddness, he does appreciate a handsome woman . . . Now then, your bosom, we must do something there; why you're nearly flatl You see, there's no scope to allow a fine drape down under the arms, see?" She pointed to her own voluminous rolls of adipose. "Suppose we just roll up a bit of cushion and—"

"No," said Jean tremulously. Was it possible that they thought her so ugly? "I won't wear padding."

Mrs. Blaiskell sniffed. "It's your own self that's to benefit, my dear. I'm sure it's not me that's the wizened one."

Jean bent over her black slippers. "No, you're very sleek."

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded proudly. "I keep myself well shaped out, and all the better for it. It wasn't so when I was your age, miss, 111 tell you; I was on Earth then—"

"Oh, you weren't bom here?"

"No, miss, I was one of the poor souls pressed and ridden by gravity, and I burned up my body with the effort of mere conveyance. No, I was bom in Sydney, Australia, of decent kind folk, but they were too poor to buy-me place on Abercrombie. I was lucky enough to secure just such a position as you have, and that was while Mr. Justus, and old Mrs. Eva, his mother—that's Earl's grandmother—was still with us. I've never been down to Earth since. I'll never set foot on the surface again."

"Don't you miss the festivals and great buildings and all the lovely countryside?"

"Pah!" Mrs. Blaiskell spat the word. "And be pressed into hideous folds and wrinkles? And ride in a cart, and be stared at and snickered at by the home people? Thin as sticks they are with their constant worry and fight against the pull of the soil! No, miss, we have our own sceneries and fetes; there's a pavanne for tomorrow night, a Grand Masque Pantomime, a Pageant of Beautiful Women, all in the month ahead. And best, I'm among my own people, the round ones, and I've never a wrinkle on my face. I'm fine and fullblown, and I wouldn't trade with any of them below."

Jean shrugged. "If you're happy, that's all that matters." She looked at herself in the mirror with satisfaction. Even if fat Mrs. Blaiskell thought otherwise, the black rompers looked well on her, now that she'd fitted them snug to her hips and waist. Her legs—slender, round and shining ivory—were good, this she knew. Even if weird Mr. Webbard and odd Mrs. Blaiskell thought otherwise. Wait till she tried them on young Earl. He preferred gravity girls; Fotheringay had told her so. And yet—Webbard and Mrs. Blaiskell had hinted otherwise. Maybe he liked both lands? . . . Jean smiled, a little tremulously. Ji Earl liked both kinds, then he would like almost anything that was warm, moved and breathed. And that certainly included herself.

If she asked Mrs. Blaiskell outright, she'd be startled and shocked. Good proper Mrs. Blaiskell. A motherly souL not like the matrons in the various asylums and waifs' homes of her experience. Strapping big women those had been—practical and quick with their hands . . . But Mrs. Blaiskell was nice; she would never have deserted her child on a pool table. Mrs. Blaiskell would have struggled and starved herself to keep her child and raise her nicely . . . Jean idly speculated how it would seem with Mrs. Blaiskell for a mother. And Mr. Mycroft for a father. It gave her a queer prickly feeling, and also somehow called up from deep inside, a dark dull resentment tinged with anger.

Jean moved uneasily, fretfully. Never mind the nonsense! You're playing a lone hand. What would you want with relatives? What an ungodly nuisance! She would never have been allowed this adventure up to Abercrombie Station . . . On the other hand, with relatives there would be many fewer problems on how to spend two million dollars.

Jean sighed. Her own mother wasn't kind and comfortable like Mrs. Blaiskell. She couldn't have been, and the whole matter became an academic question. Forget it, put it clean out of your mind.

Mrs. Blaiskell brought forward service shoes, worn to some extent by everyone at the station: slippers with magnetic coils in the soles. Wires led to a power bank at the belt. By adjusting a rheostat, any degree of magnetism could be achieved.

"When a person works, she needs a footing," Mrs. Blaiskell explained. "Of course there's not much to do, once you get on to it. Cleaning is easy, with our good filters; still there's sometimes a stir of dust and always a little film of oil that settles from the air."

Jean straightened up. "Okay, Mrs. B., I'm ready. Where do we start?"

Mrs. Blaiskell raised her eyebrows at the familiarity, but was not seriously displeased. In the main, the girl seemed to be respectful, willing and intelligent. And—significandy-not the sort to create a disturbance with Mr. Earl.

Twitching a toe against a wall, she propelled herself down the corridor, halted by a white door, slid back the panel.

They entered a room as if from the ceiling. Jean felt an instant of vertigo, pushing herself head-first at what appeared to be a floor.

Mrs. Blaiskell deftly seized a chair, swung her body around, put her feet to the nominal floor. Jean joined her. They stood in a large round room, apparendy a section across the building. Windows opened on space, stars shone in from all sides; the entire zodiac was visible with a sweep of the eyes.

Sunlight came up from_below, shining on the ceiling, and off to one quarter hung the half moon, hard and sharp as a new coin. The room was rather too opulent for Jean's taste. She was conscious of an overwhelming surfeit of mustard-saffron carpet, white panelling with gold arabesques, a round table clamped to the floor, surrounded by chairs footed with magnetic casters. A crystal chandelier thrust rigidly down; rotund cherubs peered at intervals from the angle between wall and ceiling.

"The Pleasuance," said Mrs. Blaiskell. "You'll clear in here every morning first thing.'' She' described Jean's duties in detail.

"Next we go to—" she nudged Jean. "Here's old Mrs. Clara, Earl's mother. Bow you head, just as I do."

A woman dressed in rose-purple floated into the room. She wore an expression of absent-minded arrogance, as if in all the universe there were no doubt, uncertainty or equivocation. She was almost perfectly globular, as wide as she was tall. Her hair was silver-white, her face a bubble of smooth flesh, daubed apparently at random with rouge. She wore .stones spread six inches down over her bulging bosom and shoulders.

Mrs. Blaiskell bowed her head unctuously. "Mrs. Clara dear, allow me to introduce the new parlor maid; she's new up from Earth and very handy."

Mrs. Clara Abercrombie darted Jean a quick look. "Emaciated creature."

"Oh, she'll healthen up," cooed Mrs. Blaiskell. "Plenty of
good food and hard work will do wonders for her; after all
she's only a child." . ,

"Mmmph. Hardly. It's blood, Blaiskell, and well you know it."

"Well, yes of course, Mrs. Clara."

Mrs. Clara continued in a brassy voice, darting glances around the room. "Either it's good blood you have or vinegar. This girl here, she'll never be" really comfortable, I can see it. It's not in her blood."

"No, ma'am, you're correct in what you say."

"It's not in Earl's blood. He's the one I'm worried for. Hugo was the rich one, but his brother Lionel after him, poor dear Lionel, and—"

"What about Lionel?" said a husky voice. Jean twisted. This was Earl. "Who's heard from Lionel?"

"No one, my dear. He's gone, hell never be back. I was but commenting that neither one of you ever reached your growth, showing all bone as you do."

Earl scowled past his mother, past Mrs. Blaiskell, and his gaze fell on Jean. "What's this? Another servant? We don't need her. Send her away. Always ideas for more expense."

"She's for your rooms, EarL my dear," said his mother.

"Where's Jessy? What was wrong with Jessy?"

Mrs. Clara and Mrs. Blaiskell exchanged indulgent glances. Jean turned Earl a slow arch look. He blinked, then frowned. Jean dropped her eyes, traced a pattern on the rug with her toe, an operation, which she knew sent interesting movements along her leg. Earning the two million dollars wouldn't be as irksome as she had feared. Because Earl was not at all fat. He was stocky, solid, with bull shoulders and a bull neck. He had a close crop of tight blond curls, a florid complexion, a big waxy nose, a ponderous jaw. His mouth was good, drooping sullenly at the moment

He was something less than attractive, thought Jean. On Earth she would have ignored him, or if he persisted, stung him to fury with a series of insults. But she had been expecting far worse: a bulbous creature like Webbard, a human balloon ... Of course there was no real reason for Earl to be fat; the children of fat people were as likely as not to be of normal size.

Mrs. Clara was instructing Mrs. Blaiskell for the day, Mrs. Blaiskell nodding precisely on each sixth word and ticking off points on her stubby little fingers.

Mrs. Clara finished, Mrs. Blaiskell nodded to Jean. "Come, miss, there's work to be done."

Earl called after them, "Mind now, no one in my studyr

Jean asked curiously, "Why doesn't he want anyone in bis study?"

"That's where he keeps all his collections. He won't have a thing disturbed. Very strange sometimes, Mr. Earl, you'll just have to make allowances, and be on your good behavior. In some ways he's harder to serve than Mrs. Clara,"

"Earl was bom here?"

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded. "He's never been down to Earth. Says it's a place of crazy people, and the Lord knows, he's more than half right."

"Who are Hugo and Lionel?"

"They're the two oldest. Hugo is dead, Lord rest him, and Lionel is off on his travels. Then under Earl there's Harper and Dauphin and Millicent and Clarice. That's all Mrs. Clara's children, all very proud and portly. Earl is the skinny lad of the lot, and very lucky too, because when Hugo died, Lionel was off gadding and so Earl inherited . . . Now here's his suite, and what a mess."

As they worked Mrs. Blaiskell commented on various aspects of the room. "That bed nowl Earl wasn't satisfied with sleeping under a saddleband like the rest of us, nol He wears pajamas of magnetized cloth, and that weights him against the cushion almost as if he lived on Earth . . . And this reading and studying, my word, there's nothing the lad won't think of! And his telescope! He'll sit in the cupola and focus on Earth by the hour."

"Maybe he'd like to visit Earth?"

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if you was close on it there. The place has a horrid fascination for him. But he can't leave Abercrombie, you know."

"That's strange. Why not?"

Mrs. Blaiskell darted her wise look. "Because then he forfeits his inheritance; that's in the original charter, that the owner must remain on the premises." She pointed to a gray door. That there's his study. And now I'm going to give you a peep in, so you won't be tormented by curiosity and perhaps make trouble for yourself when I'm not around to keep an eye open . . . Now don't be excited by what you see; there's nothing to hurt you."

With the air of a priestess unveiling mystery, Mrs. Blaiskell fumbled a moment with the door-slide, manipulating it in a manner which Jean was not able to observe.

The door swung aside. Mrs. Blaiskell smirked as Jean jumped back in alarm.

"Now, now, now, don't be alarmed; I told you there was nothing to trouble. That's one of Master Earl's zoological specimens and rare trouble and expense he's gone to—"

Jean sighed deeply, and gave closer inspection to the homed
black creature which stood on two legs just inside the door,
poised and leaning as if ready to embrace the intruder in
leathery black arms. -

"That's the most scary part," said Mrs. Blaiskell in quiet satisfaction. "He's got his insects and bugs there—" she pointed "—his gems there, his old music disks there, his stamps there, his books along that cabinet. Nasty things, I'm ashamed of him. Don't let me know of you peeking in them nasty books that Mr. Earl gloats over."

"No, Mrs. Blaiskell," said Jean meekly. "I'm not interested in that kind of thing. If it's what I think it is."

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded emphatically. "It's what you think it is, and worse." She did not expand on the background of her familiarity with the library, and Jean thought it inappropriate to inquire.

Earl stood behind them. "Well?" he asked in a heavy sarcastic voice. "Getting an eyeful?" He kicked himself across the room, slammed shut the door.

Mrs. Blaiskell said in a conciliatory voice, "Now Mr. Earl, I was just showing the new girl what to avoid, what not to look at, and I didn't want her swounding of heart stoppage if innocent-like she happened to peek inside."

Earl grunted. "If she peeps inside while I'm there, shell be 'swounding' from something more than heart-stoppage."

"I'm a good cook too," said Jean. She turned away. "Come, Mrs. Blaiskell, let's leave until Mr. Earl has recovered his temper. I won't have him hurting your feelings."

Mrs. Blaiskell stammered, "Now then I Surely there's no harm . . ." She stopped. Earl had gone into his study and slammed the door.

Mrs. Blaiskell's eyes glistened with thick tears. "Ah, my dear, I do so dislike harsh words . . ."

They worked in silence and finished the bedroom. At the door Mrs. Blaiskell said confidentially into Jean's ear, "Why do you think Earl is so gruff and grumpy?"

"I've no idea," breathed Jean. "None whatever."

"Well," said Mrs. Blaiskell warily, "it all boils down to this —his appearance. He's so self-conscious of his thinness that he's all eaten up inside. He can't bear to have anyone see him; he thinks they're sneering. I've heard him tell Mrs. Clara so. Of course they're not; they're just sorry. He eats like a horse, he takes gland-pellets, but still he's that spindly and all hard tense muscle." She inspected Jean thoughtfully. "I think well put you on the same kind of regimen, and see if we can't make a prettier woman out of you." Then she shook her head doubtfully, clicked her tongue. "It might not be in your blood, as Mrs. Clara says. I hardly can see that it's in your blood...."

There were tint red ribbons on Jean's slippers, a red ribbon in her hair, a coquettish black beauty spot on her cheek. She had altered her rompers so that they clung unobtrusively to her waist and hips.

Before she left the room she examined herself in the mirror. "Maybe it's me that's out of step I How would I look with a couple hundred more pounds of grade? No. I suppose not. I'm the gamin type. Ill look like a wolverine when I'm sixty, but for the next forty years—watch out."

She took herself along the corridor, past the Pleasuance, the music rooms, the formal parlor, the refectory, up into the bedrooms. She stopped by Earl's door, flung it open, entered, pushing the electrostatic duster ahead of her.

The room was dark; the transpar walls were opaque under the action of the scrambling field.

Jean found the dial, turned up the light.

Earl was awake. He lay on his side, his yellow magnetic pajamas pressing him into the mattress. A pale blue quilt was pulled up to his shoulders, his arm lay across his face. Under the shadow of his arm his eye smouldered out at Jean.

He lay motionless, too outraged to move.

Jean put her hands on her hips, said in her clear young voice, "Get up, you sluggard! Youll get as fat as the rest of them lounging around till all hours.. .."

The silence was choked and ominous. Jean bent to peer under Earl's arm. "Are you alive?"

Without moving Earl said in a harsh low voice, "Exactly what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm about my regular duties. I've finished the Pleasuance. Next comes your room."

His eyes went to a clock. "At seven o'clock in the morning?"

"Why not? The sooner I get done, the sooner I can get to my own business."

"Your own business be damned. Get out of here, before you get hurt."

"No, sir. I'm a self-determined individual. Once my work is done, there's nothing more important than self-expression." "Get out!"

"I'm an artist, a painter. Or maybe 111 be a poet this year. Or a dancer. I'd make a wonderful ballerina. Watch." She essayed a pirouette, but the impulse took her up to the wiling—not ungracefully, this she made sure.

She pushed herself back. "If I had magnetic slippers I could twirl an hour and a half. Grand jetes are easy. . . ."

He raised himself on his elbow, blinking and glaring, as if on the verge of launching himself at her.

"You're either crazy—or so utterly impertinent as to a-mount to the same thing."

"Not at all," said Jean. "I'm very courteous. There might be a difference of opinion, but still it doesn't make you automatically right."

He slumped back on the bed. "Argue with old Webbard," he said thickly. "Now—for the last time—get out!"

"I'll go," said Jean, "but you'll be sorry."

"Sorry?" His voice had risen nearly an octave. "Why should I be sorry?"

"Suppose I took offense at your rudeness and told Mr. Webbard I wanted to quit?"

Earl said through tight lips, "I'm going to talk to Mr. Webbard today and maybe you'll be asked to quit . . . Miraculous!" he told himself bitterly. "Scarecrow maids breaking in at sunup. . .."

Jean stared in surprise. "Scarecrow! Me? On Earth I'm considered a very pretty girl. I can get away with things like this, disturbing people, because I'm pretty."

"This is Abercrombie Station," said Earl in a dry voice. "Thank God I"

"You're rather handsome yourself," said Jean tentatively.

Earl sat up, his face tinged with angry blood. "Get out of here!" he shouted. "You're discharged!"

"Pish," said Jean. "You wouldn't dare fire me."

"I wouldn't dare?" asked Earl in a dangerous voice. "Why wouldn't I dare?"

"Because I'm smarter than you are."

Earl made a husky sound in his throat. "And just what makes you think so?"

Jean laughed. "You'd be very nice, EarL if you weren't so touchy."

"All right, well take that up first. Why am I so touchy?"

Jean shrugged. "I said you were nice-looking and you blew a skull-fuse." She blew an imaginary fluff from the back of her hand. "I call that touchiness."

Earl wore a grim smile that made Jean think of Fother-ingay. Earl might be tough if pushed far enough. But not as tough as—well, say Ansel Clellan. Or Fiorenzo. Or Party MacClure. Or Fotheringay. Or herself, for that matter.

He was staring at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time. This is what she wanted. "Why do you think you're smarter, then?"

"Oh, I don't know . .. Are you smart?"

His glance darted off to the doors leading to his study; a momentary quiver of satisfaction crossed his face. "Yes, I'm smart."

"Can you play chess?"

"Of course I play chess," he said belligerently. "I'm one of the best chess players alive."

"I could beat you with one hand." Jean had played chess four times in her life.

"I wish you had something I wanted," he said slowly. "I'd take it away from you."

Jean gave him an arch look. "Let's play for forfeits."

"No/"

"Hal" She laughed, eyes sparkling. He flushed. "Very well."

Jean picked up her duster. "Not now, though." She had accomplished more than she had hoped for. She looked ostentatiously over her shoulder. "I've got to work. If Mrs. Blais-kell finds me here she'll accuse you of seducing me."

He snorted with twisted lips. He looked like an angry blond boar, thought Jean. But two million dollars was two million dollars. And it wasn't as bad as if he'd been fat. The idea had been planted in his mind. "You be thinking of the forfeit," said Jean. "I've got to work."

She left the room, turning him a final glance over her shoulder which she hoped was cryptic.

The servant's quarters were in the main cylinder, the Ab-ercrombie Station proper. Jean sat quietly in a comer of the mess-hall, watching and listening while the other servants had their elevenses: cocoa gobbed heavy with whipped cream, pastries, ice-cream. The talk was high-pitched, edgy. Jean wondered at the myth that fat people were languid and easygoing.

From the comer of her eye she saw Mr. Webbard float into the room, his face tight and gray with anger.

She lowered her head over her cocoa, watching him from under her lashes.

Webbard looked directly at her, his lips sucked in and his bulbous cheeks quivered. For a moment it seemed that he would drift at her, attracted by the force of his anger a-lone; somehow he restrained himself. He looked around the room until he spied Mrs. Blaiskell. A flick of his fingers sent him to where she sat at the end table, held by magnets appropriately fastened to her rompers.

He bent over her, muttered in her ear. Jean could not hear his words, but she saw Mrs. Blaiskell's face change and her eyes go seeking around the room.

Mr. Webbard completed his dramatization and felt better. He wiped the palms of his hands along the ample area of his dark blue corduroy trousers, twisted with a quick wriggle of his shoulders, and sent himself to the door with a flick of his toe.

Marvellous, thought Jean, the majesty, the orbital massive-ness of Webbard's passage through the air. The full moon-face, heavy-lidded, placid; the rosy cheeks, the chins and jowls puffed round and tumescent, glazed and oily, without blemish, mar or wrinkle; the hemisphere of the chest, then the bifurcate lower half, in the rich dark blue corduroy: the whole marvel coasting along with the inexorable momentum of an ore barge. . . .

Jean became aware that Mrs. Blaiskell was motioning to her from the doorway, making cryptic little signals with her fat fingers.

Mrs. Blaiskell was waiting in the little vestibule she called her office, her face scene to shifting emotions. "Mr. Web-bard has given me some serious information,'' she said in a voice intended to be stem.

Jean displayed alarm. "About me?"

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded-"decisively. "Mr. Earl complained of some very strange behavior this morning. At seven o'clock or earlier. ..."

Jean gasped. "Is it possible, that Earl has had the audacity to—"

"Mr. Earl," Mrs. Blaiskell corrected primly.

"Why, Mrs. Blaiskell, it was as much as my life was worth to get away from him I"

Mrs. Blaiskell blinked uneasily. "That's not precisely the way Mr. Webbard put it. He said you—"

"Does that sound reasonable? Is that likely, Mrs. BP"

"Well—no," Mrs. Blaiskell admitted, putting her hand to her chin, and tapping her teeth with a fingernail. "Certainly it seems odd, come to consider a little more closely." She looked at Jean. "But how is it that—"

"He called me into his room, and then—" Jean had never been able to cry, but she hid her face in her hands.

"There, now," said Mrs. Blaiskell. "I never believed Mr. Webbard anyway. Did he—did he—" she found herself unable to phrase the question.

Jean shook her head. "It wasn't for want of trying."

"Just goes to show," muttered Mrs. Blaiskell. "And I thought he'd grown out of that nonsense."

"Nonsense?" The word had been Invested with a certain overtone that set it out of context.

Mrs. Blaiskell was embarrassed. She shifted her eyes. "Earl has passed through several stages, and I'm not sure which has been the most troublesome ... A year or two ago—two years, because this was while Hugo was still alive and the family was together—he saw so many Earth films that he began to admire Earth women, and it had us all worried. Thank Heaven, he's completely thrown off that un-wholesomeness, but it's gone to make him all the more shy and self-conscious." She sighed. "If only one of the pretty girls of the station would love him for himself, for his brilliant mind . . . But no, they're all romantic and they're more taken by a rich round body and fine flesh, and poor gnarled Earl is sure that when one of them does smile his way she's after his money, and very likely true, so I sayl" She looked at Jean speculatively. "It just occurred to me that Earl might be veering back to his old—well, strangeness. Not that you're not a nice well-meaning creature, because you are."

"Well, well," said Jean dispiritedly. Evidently she had achieved not so much this morning as she had hoped. But then, every campaign had its setbacks.

"In any event, Mr. Webbard has asked that I give you different duties, to keep you from Mr. Earl's sight, because he's evidendy taken an antipathy to you . . . And after this morning I'm sure you'll not object."

"Of course not," said Jean absendy. Earl, that bigoted, warped wretch of a boyl

"For today, you'll just watch the Pleasuance and service the periodicals and water the atrium plants. Tomorrow —well, we'll see."

Jean nodded, and turned to leave. "One more thing," said Mrs. Blaiskell in a hesitant voice. Jean paused. Mrs. Blaiskell could not seem to find the right words.

They came in a sudden surge, all strung together. "Be a little careful of yourself, especially when you're alone near Mr. Earl. This is Abercrombie Station, you know, and he's

Earl Abercrombie, and the High Justice, and some very strange things happen...."

Jean said in a shocked whisper, "Physical violence, Mrs. Blaiskelir

Mrs. Blaiskell stammered and blushed. "Yes, I suppose you'd call it that . . . Some very disgraceful things have come to light. Not nice, though I shouldn't be saying it to you, who's only been with us a day. But, be careful. I wouldn't want your soul on my conscience."

"Ill be careful," said Jean in a properly hushed voice.

Mrs. Blaiskell nodded her head, an indication that the interview was at an end.

Jean returned to the refectory. It was really very nice for Mrs. Blaiskell to worry about her. It was almost as if Mrs. Blaiskell were fond of her. Jean sneered automatically. That was too much to expect. Women always disliked her because their men were never safe when Jean was near. Not that Jean consciously flirted—at least, not always—but there was something about her that interested men, even the old ones. They paid lip-service to the idea that Jean was a child, but their eyes wandered up and down, the way a young man's eyes wandered.

But out here on Abercrombie Station it was different. Ruefully Jean admitted that no one was jealous of her, no one on the entire station. It was the other way around; she was regarded as an object for pity. But it was still nice of Mrs. Blaiskell to take her under her wing; it gave Jean a pleasant warm feeling. Maybe if and when she got hold of that two million dollars—and her thoughts went to Earl. The warm feeling drained from her mind.

Earl, hoity-toity Earl, was ruffled because she had disturbed his rest. So bristle-necked Earl thought she was gnarled and stunted! Jean pulled herself to the chair. Seating herself with a thump, she seized up her bulb of cocoa and sucked at the spout.

Earl! She pictured him: the sullen face, the lanky blond hair, the over-ripe mouth, the stocky body he so desperately yearned to fatten. This was the man she must inveigle into matrimony. On Earth, on almost any other planet in the human universe it would be child's play— This was Abercrombie Station!

She sipped her cocoa, considering the problem. The odds that Earl would fall in love with her and come through with a legitimate proposal seemed slim. Could he be tricked into a position where in order to save face or reputation he would be forced to marry her? Probably not. At Abercrombie Station, she told herself, marriage with her represented almost the ultimate loss of face. Still, there were avenues to be explored. Suppose she beat Earl at chess, could she make marriage the forfeit? Hardly. Earl would be too sly and dishonorable to pay up. It was necessary to make him want to marry her, and that would entail making herself desirable in his eyes, which in turn made necessary a revision of Earl's whole ouÜook. To begin with, he'd have to feel that his own person was not entirely loathesome (although it was). Earl's morale must be built up to a point where he felt himself superior to the rest of Abercrombie Station, and where he would be proud to marry one of his own land.

A possibility at the other pole: if Earl's self-respect were so utterly blasted and reduced, if he could be made to feel so despicable and impotent that he would be ashamed to show his face outside his room, he might marry her as the best bet in sight . . . And still another possibility: revenge. If Earl realized that the fat girls who flattered him were actually ridiculing him behind his back, he might marry her from sheer spite.

One last possibility. Duress. Marriage or death. She considered poisons and antidotes, diseases and cures, a straightforward gun in the ribs. . . .

Jean angrily tossed the empty cocoa bulb into the waste hopper. Trickery, sex lure, flattery, browbeating, revenge, fear—which was the most far-fetched? All were ridiculous.

She decided she needed more time, more information. Perhaps Earl had a weak spot she could work on. If they had a community of interests, she'd be much farther advanced. Examination of his study might give her a few hints.

A bell chimed, a number dropped on a call-board and a voice said, "Pleas uance."

Mrs. Blaiskell appeared. "That's you, miss. Now go in, nice as you please, and ask Mrs. Clara what it is that's wanted, and then you can go off duty till three."

Mrs. Clara Abercrombie, however, was not present The Pleasuance was occupied by twenty or thirty young folk, talking and arguing with rather giddy enthusiasm. The girls wore pastel sarins, velvets, gauzes, tight around their rotund pink bodies, with frothing little ruffles and anklets, while the young men affected elegant dark grays and blues and tawny beiges, with military trim of white and scarlet.

Ranged along a wall were a dozen stage settings in miniature. Above, a ribbon of paper bore the words 'Tandora in Elis. Libretto by A. Percy Stevanic, music by Colleen O'Casey."

Jean looked around the room to see who had summoned her. Earl raised his finger peremptorily. Jean walked on her magnetic shoes to where he floated near one of the miniature stage sets. He turned to a mess of cocoa and whipped cream, clinging like a tumor to the side of the set —evidently a iroken bulb.

"Clean up that spill," said Earl in a flinty voice.

Jean thought, he half-wants to rub it in, half-wants to act as if he doesn't recognize me. She nodded dutifully. "Ill get a container and a sponge."

When she returned, Earl was across the room, talking earnestly to a girl whose globular body was encased in a gown of brilliant rose velvet. She wore rose-buds over each ear and played with a ridiculous little white dog while she listened to Earl with a half-hearted affectation of interest

Jean worked as slowly as possible, watching from the comers of her eyes. Snatches of conversation reached her: "Lapwill's done simply a marvelous job on the editing, but I don't see that he's given Myras the same scope—" "—if the pageant grosses ten thousand dollars, Mrs. Clara says she'll put another ten thousand toward the construction fund. Think of itl—A Little Theater all our own!" Excited and conspiratorial whispers ran through the Pleasaunce, "—and for the water scene why not have the chorus float across the sky as moons?"

Jean watched Earl. He hung on the fat girl's words, and spoke with a pathetic attempt at intimate comradeship and jocularity. The girl nodded politely, twisted her features into a smile. Jean noticed her eyes followed a hearty youth whose physique bulged out his plum-colored breeches like wind bellying a spinnacker. Earl perceived the girl's inattention. Jean saw him falter momentarily, then work even harder at his badinage. The fat girl licked her lips, swung her ridiculous little dog on its leash, and glanced over to where the purple-trousered youth bellowed with laughter.

A sudden idea caused Jean to hasten her work. Earl no doubt would be occupied here until lunch time—two hours away. And Mrs. Blaiskell had relieved her from duty till three.

She took herself from the hall, disposed of the cleaning equipment, dove up the corridor to Earl's private chambers.

At Mrs. Clara's suite she paused, listening at the door. Snores I

Another fifty feet to Earl's chambers. She looked quickly up and down the corridor, slid back the door and slipped cautiously inside.

The room was silent as Jean made a quick survey. Closet, dressing room to one side, sun-flooded bathroom to the other.

Across the room was the tall gray door into the study. A sign hung across the door, apparently freshly made.

"PRIVATE. DANGER. DO NOT ENTER."

Jean paused to consider. What kind of danger? Earl might have set devious safeguards over his private chamber.

She examined the door-slide button. It was overhung by an apparendy innocent guard—which might or might not control an alarm circuit. She pressed her belt-buckle against the shutter in such a way as to maintain an electrical circuit, then moved the guard aside, pressed the button with her fingernail—gingerly. She knew of buttons which darted out hypodermics when pressed.

There was no whisper of machinery. The door remained in place.

Jean blew fretfully between her teeth. No keyhole, no buttons to play a combination on . . . Mrs. Blaiskell had found no trouble. Jean tried to reconstruct her motions. She moved to the slide, set her head to where she could see the reflection of the light from the wall . . . There was a smudge on the gloss. She looked closely and a tell-tale glint indicated a photo-electric eye.

She put her finger on the eye, pressed the slide-button. The door slipped open. In spite of having been fore-warned, Jean recoiled from the horrid black shape which hung forward as if to grapple her.

She waited. After a moment the door fell gently back into place.

Jean returned to the outer corridor, stationed herself where she could duck into Mrs. Clara's apartments if a suspicious shape came looming up the corridor. Earl might not have contented himself with the protection of a secret electric lock.

Five minutes passed. Mrs. Clara's personal maid passed by, a globular little Chinese, eyes like two shiny black beetles, but no one else.

Jean pushed herself back to Earl's room, crossed to the study door. Once more she read the sign:

"PRIVATE. DANGER. DO NOT ENTER."

She hesitated. "I'm sixteen years old. Going on seventeen. Too young to die. It's just like that odd creature to furnish his study with evil tricks." She shrugged off the notion. "What a person won't do for money."

She opened the door, slipped through.

The door closed behind her. Quickly she moved out from under the poised demon-shape and turned to examine Earl's sanctum. She looked right, left, up, down.

"There's a lot to see here," she muttered. "I hope Earl doesn't run out of sheep's-eyes for his fat girl, or decide he wants a particular newspaper clipping . . ."

She turned power into her slipper magnets, and wondered where to begin. The room was more like a warehouse or museum than a study, and gave the impression of wild confusion arranged, sorted, and filed by an extraordinary finicky mind.

After a fashion, it was a beautiful room, imbued with an atmosphere of erudition in its dark wood-tones. The far wall glowed molten with rich color—a rose window from the old Chartres cathedral, in full effulgence under the glare of free-space sunlight.

"Too bad Earl ran out of outside wall," said Jean. "A collection of stained glass windows runs into a lot of wall space, and one is hardly a collection . . . Perhaps there's another room . . ." For the study, large as it was, apparently occupied only half the space permitted by the dimensions of Earl's suite. "But—for the moment—I've got enough here to look at."

Racks, cases, files, walnut and leaded-glass cabinets surfaced the walls; glass-topped displays occupied the floor. To her left was a battery of tanks. In the first series swam eels, hundreds of eels: Earth eels, eels from the outer worlds. She opened a cabinet. Chinese coins hung on pegs, each documented with crabbed boyish hand-writing.

She circled the room, marvelling at the profusion.

There were rock crystals from forty-two separate planets, all of which appeared identical to Jean's unpracticed eye.

There were papyrus scrolls, Mayan codices, medieval parchments illuminated with gold and Tyrian purple, Ogham runes on mouldering sheepskin, clay cylinders incised with cuneiform.

Intricate wood-carvings—fancy chains, cages within cages, • amazing interlocking spheres, seven vested Brahmin temples.

Centimeter cubes containing samples of every known element. Thousands of postage stamps, mounted on leaves, swung out of a circular cabinet.

There were volumes of autographs of famous criminals, together with their photographs and Bertillon and Pevetsky measurements. From one corner came the rich aromas of perfumes—a thousand little flagons minutely described and coded, together with the index and code explanation, and these again had their origin on a multitude of worlds. There were specimens of fungus growths from all over the universe, and there were racks of minature phonograph records, an inch across, micro-formed from the original pressings.

She found photographs of Earl's every day life, together with his weight, height and girth measurement in crabbed handwriting, and each picture bore a colored star, a colored square, and either a red or blue disk. By this time Jean knew the flavor of Earl's personality. Near at hand there would be an index and explanation. She found it, near the camera which took the pictures. The disks referred to bodily functions; the stars, by a complicated system she could not quite comprehend, described Earl's morale, his frame of mind. The colored squares recorded his love life. Jean's mouth twisted in a wry grin. She wandered aimlessly on, fingering the physiographic globes of a hundred planets and examining maps and charts.

The cruder aspects of Earl's personality were represented in a collection of pornographic photographs, and near at hand an easel and canvas where Earl was composing a lewd study of his own. Jean pursed her mouth primly. The prospect of marrying Earl was becoming infinitely less enchanting.

She found an alcove filled with little chess-boards, each set-up in a game. A numbered card and record of moves was attached to each board. Jean picked up the inevitable index book, and glanced through. Earl played postcard chess with opponents all over the Universe. She found his record of wins and losses. He was slightly but not markedly a winner. One man, William Angelo of Toronto, beat him consistently. Jean memorized the address, reflecting that if Earl ever took up her challenge to play chess, now she knew how to beat him. She would embroil Angelo in a game, and send Earl's moves to Angelo as her own and play Angelo's return moves against Earl. It would be somewhat circuitous and tedious, but fool-proof—almost.

She continued her tour of the study. Sea-shells, moths, dragon-flies, fossil trilobites, opals, torture implements, shrunken human heads. If the collection represented bona fide learning, thought Jean, it would have taxed the time and ability of any four Earth geniuses. But the hoard was essentially mindless and mechanical, nothing more than a boy's collection of college pennants or signs or match-box covers on a vaster scale.

One of the walls opened out into an ell, and here was communication via a freight hatch to outside space. Unopened boxes, crates, cases, bundles—apparently material as yet to be filed in Earl's rookery—filled the room. At the corner another grotesque and monumental creature hung poised, as if to clutch at her, and Jean felt strangely hesitant to wander within its reach. This one stood about eight feet tall. It wore the shaggy coat of a bear and vaguely resembled a gorilla, although the face was long and pointed, peering out from under the fur like that of a French poodle's.

Jean thought of Fotheringay's reference to Earl as an "eminent zoologist." She looked around the room. The stuffed animals, the tanks of eels, Earth tropical fish and Maniacan polywriggles were the only zoological specimens in sight. Hardly enough to qualify Earl as a zoologist. Of course, there was an annex to the room . . . She heard a sound. A click at the outer door.

Jean dove behind the stuffed animal, heart thudding in her throat. With exasperation she told herself, "He's an eighteen-year-old boy ... If I can't face him down, out-argue, out-think, out-fight him, and come out on top generally, then it's time for me to start crocheting table-mats for a living." Nevertheless, she remained hidden.

Earl stood quiedy in the doorway. The door swung shut behind him. His face was flushed and damp, as if he had just recovered from anger or embarrassment. His delft-blue eyes gazed unseeingly down the roof, gradually came into focus.

He frowned, glanced suspiciously right and left, sniffed. Jean made herself small behind the shaggy fur. Could he smell her?

He coiled up his legs, kicked against the wall, dove directly toward her. Under the creature's arm she saw him approaching, bigger, bigger, bigger, arms at his sides, head turned up like a diver. He thumped against the hairy chest, put his feet to the ground, stood not six feet distant.

He was muttering under his breath. She heard him plainly. "Damnable insult ... If she only knew! Hah!" He laughed a loud scornful bark. "Hah!"

Jean relaxed with a near-audible sigh. Earl had not seen her, and did not suspect her presence.

He whisded aimlessly between his teeth, indecisively. At last he walked to the wall, reached behind a bit of omate fretwork. A panel swung aside, a flood of bright sunlight poured through the opening into the study.

Earl was whistling a tuneless cadence. He entered the room but did not shut the door. Jean darted from behind her hiding place, looked in, swept the room with her eyes. Possibly she gasped.

Earl was standing six feet away, reading from a list. He looked up suddenly, and Jean felt the brush of his eyes.

He did not move ... Had he seen her?

For a moment he made no sound, no stir. Then he came to the door, stood staring up the study, and held this position for ten or fifteen seconds. From behind the stuffed gorilla-thing Jean saw his lips move, as if he were silently calculating.

She licked her lips, thinking of the inner room.

He went out into the alcove, among the unopened boxes and bales. He pulled up several floated them toward the open door, and they drifted into the flood of sunshine. He pushed other bundles aside, found what he was seeking, and sent another bundle after the rest.

He pushed himself back to the door, where he stood suddenly tense, nose dilated, eyes keen, sharp. He sniffed the air. His eyes swung to the stuffed monster. He approached it slowly, arms hanging loose from his shoulders.

He looked behind, expelled his breath in a long drawn hiss, grunted. From within the annex Jean thought. "He can either smell me or it's telepathy!" She had darted into the room while Earl was fumbling among the crates, and ducked under a wide divan. Flat on her stomach she watched Earl's inspection of the stuffed animal, and her skin tingled. "He smells me, he feels me, he senses me."

Earl stood in the doorway, looking up and down the study. Then he carefully, slowly, closed the door, threw a bolt home, turned to face into the inner room.

For five minutes he busied himself with his crates, unbundling, arranging the contents, which seemed to be bottles of white powder, on shelves.

Jean pushed herself clear of the floor, up against the under side of the divan, and moved to a position where she could see without, being seen. Now she understood why Fotheringay had spoken of Earl as an "eminent zoologist."

There was another word which would fit him better, an unfamiliar word which Jean could not immediately dredge out of her memory. Her vocabulary was no more extensive than any girl of her own age, but the word had made an impression.

Teratology. That was the word. Earl was a teratologist.

Like the objects in his other collections, the monsters were only such creatures as lent themselves to ready, almost haphazard, collecting. They were displayed in glass cabinets. Panels at the back screened off the sunlight, and at absolute zero, the things would remain preserved indefinitely, without taxidermy or embalming.

They were a motley, though monstrous group. There were true human monsters, macro-and micro-cephalics, hermaphrodites, creatures with multiple limbs and with none, creatures sprouting tissues like buds on a yeast cell, twisted hoop-men, faceless things, things green, blue and gray.

And then there were other specimens equally hideous, but possibly normal in their own environment: the miscellaneity of a hundred life-bearing planets.

To Jean's eyes, the ultimate travesty was a fat man, displayed in a place of prominence! Possibly he had gained the conspicuous position on his own merits. He was corpulent to a degree Jean had not considered possible. Beside him Webbard might show active and athletic. Take this creature to Earth, he would slup like a jelly-fish. Out here on Aber-crombie he floated free, bloated and puffed like the throat of a singing frog! Jean looked at his face—looked again! Tight blond curls on his head. . . .

Earl yawned, stretched. He proceeded to remove his clothes. Stark naked he stood in the middle of the room. He looked slowly, sleepily along the ranks of his collection.

He made a decision, moved languidly to one of the cubicles. He pulled a switch.

Jean heard a faint musical hum, a hissing, smelled heady ozone. A moment passed. She heard a sigh of air. The inner door of a glass cubicle opened. The creature within, moving feebly, drifted out into the room. . . .

Jean pressed her lips tight together; after a moment looked away.

Marry Earl? She winced. No, Mr. Fotheringay. You marry him yourself, you're as able as I am . . . Two million dollars? She shuddered. Five million sounded better. For five million she might marry him. But that's as far as it would go. She'd put on her own ring, there'd be no kissing of the bride. She was Jean Parlier, no plaster saint. But enough was enough, and this was too much.

Presently Eabl left the room. Jean lay still, listened. No sound came from outside. She must be careful. Earl would surely kill her if he found her here. She waited five minutes. No sound, no motion reached her. Cautiously she edged herself out from under the divan.

The sunlight burnt her skin with a pleasant warmth, but she hardly felt it. Her skin seemed stained; the air seemed tainted and soiled her throat, her lungs. She wanted a bath . . . Five million dollars would buy lots of baths. Where was the index? Somewhere would be an index. There had to be an index . . . Yes. She found it, and quickly consulted the proper entry. It gave her much meat for thought.

There was also an entry describing the revitalizing mechanism. She glanced at it hurriedly, understanding little. Such things existed, she knew. Tremendous magnetic fields streamed through the protoplasm, gripping and binding tight each individual atom, and when the object was kept at absolute zero, energy expenditure dwindled to near-nothing. Switch off the clamping field, kick the particles back into motion with a penetrating vibration, and the creature returned to life.

She returned the index to its place, pushed herself to the door.

No sound came from outside. Earl might be writing or coding the events of the day on his photograph . . . Well, so then? She was not helpless. She opened the door, marched boldly through.

The study was empty!

She dove to the outer door, listened. A faint sound of running water reached her ears. Earl was in the shower. This would be a good time to leave.

She pushed the door slide. The door snapped open. She stepped out into Earl's bedroom, pushed herself across to the outer door.

Earl came out of the bathroom, his stocky fresh-skinned torso damp with water.

He stood stock-still, then hastily draped a towel around his middle. His face suddenly went mottled red and pink. "What are you doing in here?"

Jean said sweedy, "I came to check on your linen, to see if you needed towels."

He made no answer, but stood watching her. He said harshly, "Where have you been this last hour?"

Jean made a flippant gesture. "Here, there. Were you looking for me?"

He took a stealthy step forward. "I've a good mind to—"

"To what?" Behind her she fumbled for the door-slide.

"To-"

The door opened.

"Wait," said Earl. He pushed himself forward. Jean slipped out into the corridor, a foot ahead of Earl's hands.

"Come back in," said Earl, making a clutch for her.

From behind them Mrs. Blaiskell said in a horrified voice, "Well, I never! Mr. Earl!" She had appeared from Mrs. Clara's room.

Earl backed into his room hissing unvoiced curses. Jean looked in after him. The next time you see me, youll wish you'd played chess with me."

"Jean!" barked Mrs. BlaiskelL

Earl asked in a hard voice, "What do you mean?"

Jean had no idea what she meant. Her mind raced. Better keep her ideas to herself. "Ill tell you tomorrow moming." She laughed mischievously. "About six or six-thirty."

"Miss Jean!" cried Mrs. Blaiskell angrily. "Come away from that door this instant!"

Jean calmed herself in the servant's refectory with a pot of tea.

Webbard came in, fat, pompous, and fussy as a hedgehog. He spied Jean and his voice rose to a reedy oboe tone. "Miss, miss!"

Jean had a trick she knew to be effective, thrusting out her firm young chin, squinting, charging her voice with metal. "Are you looking for me?"

Webbard said, "Yes. I certainly am. Where on earth—"

"Well, I've been looking for you. Do you want to hear what I'm going to tell you in private or not?"

Webbard blinked. "Your tone of voice is impudent, miss. If you please—"

"Okay," said Jean. "Right here then. First of all, I'm quitting. I'm going back to Earth. I'm going to see—"

Webbard held up his hand in alarm, looked around the refectory. Conversation along the tables had come to a halt. A dozen curious eyes were watching.

"Ill interview you in my office," said Webbard.

The door slid shut behind her. Webbard pressed his rotundity into a chair; magnetic strands in his trousers held him in place. "Now what is all this? Ill have you know there've been serious complaints."

Jean said disgustedly, "Tie a can to it, Webbard. Talk sense."

Webbard was thunderstruck. "You're an impudent minx—" "Look. Do you want me to tell Earl how I landed this job?"

Webbard's face quivered. His mouth fell open; he blinked four or five times rapidly. "You wouldn't dare to—"

Jean said patienüy, "Forget the master-slave routine for five minutes, Webbard. This is man-to-man talk."

"What do you want?"

"I've a few questions I want to ask you."

"Well?"

"Tell me about old Mr. Abercrombie, Mrs. Clara's husband."

"There's nothing to tell. Mr. Justus was a very distinguished gentleman."

"He and Mrs. Clara had how many children?" "Seven."

"And the oldest inherits the station?"

"The oldest, always the oldest. Mr. Justus believed in firm organization. Of course the other children were guaranteed a home here at the station, those who wished to stay."

"And Hugo was thé oldest How long after Mr. Justus did he die?"

Webbard found the converstaion distasteful. "This is all footling nonsense," he growled in a deep voice. "How long?" "Two years."

"And what happened to him?"

Webbard said briskly. "He had a stroke. Cardiac complaint. Now what's all this I hear about your quirting?" "How long ago?" "Ah—two years." "And then Earl inherited."

Webbard pursed his lips. "Mr. Lionel unfortunately was off the station, and Mr. Earl became legal master."

"Rather nice timing, from Earl's viewpoint."

Webbard puffed out his cheeks. "Now then, young lady, we've had enough of that! If—"

"Mr. Webbard, let's have an understanding once and for all. Either you answer my questions and stop this blustering or I'll ask someone else. And when I'm done, that someone else will be asking you questions too."

"You insolent little trash!" snarled Webbard.

Jean turned toward the door. Webbard grunted, thrashed himself forward. Jean gave her arm a shake; out of nowhere a blade of quivering glass appeared in her hand.

Webbard floundered in alarm, trying to halt his motion through the air. Jean put up her foot, pushed him in the belly, back toward his chair.

She said, "I want to see a picture of the entire family."

"I don't have any such pictures."

Jean shrugged. "I can go to any public library and dial the Who's-Who." She looked him over coolly, as she coiled her knife. Webbard shrank back in his chair. Perhaps he thought her a homicidal maniac. Well, she wasn't a maniac and she wasn't homicidal either, unless she was driven to it. She asked easily, "Is it a fact that Earl is worth a billion dollars?"

Webbard snorted. "A billion dollars? Ridiculous. The family owns nothing but the station and lives off the income. A hundred million dollars would build another twice as big and luxurious."

"Where did Fotheringay get that figure?" she asked won-deringly.

"I couldn't say," Webbard replied shortly. "Where is Lionel now?"

Webbard pulled his lips in and out desperately.

"He's—resting somewhere along the Riviera."

"Hm . . . You say you don't have any photographs?"

Webbard scratched his chin. "I believe that there's a shot of Lionel. . . Let me see . . . Yes, just a moment." He fumbled in his desk, pawed and peered, and at last came up with a snap-shot. "Mr. Lionel."

Jean examined the photograph with interest. "Well, well." The face in the photograph and the face of the fat man in Earl's zoological collection were the same. "Well, well." She looked up sharply. "And what's his address?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Webbard responded with some return of his mincing dignity.

"Quit dragging your feet, Webbard."

"Oh well—the Villa Passe-temps, Juan-les-pins."

"Ill believe it when I see your address file. Where is it?"

Webbard -began breathing hard. "Now see here, young lady, there's serious matters at stake I"

"Such as what?"

"Well—" Webbard lowered his voice, glanced conspirator-ially at the walls of the room. "It's common knowledge at the station that Mr. Earl and Mr. Lionel are—well, not friendly. And there's a rumor—a rumor, mind you—that Mr. Earl has hired a well-known criminal to kill Mr. Lionel."

That would be Fotheringay, Jean surmised.

Webbard continued. "So you see, it's necessary that I exercise the utmost caution...."

Jean laughed. "Let's see that file."

Webbard finally indicated a card file. Jean said, "You know where it is; pull it out"

Webbard glumly sorted through the cards. "Here."

The address was: Hotel Atlantide, Apartment 3001. French Colony, Metropolis, Earth.

Jean memorized the address, then stood irresolutely, trying to think of further questions. Webbard smiled slowly. Jean ignored him, stood nibbling her fingertips. Times like this she felt the inadequacy of her youth. When it came to action—fighting, laughing,' spying, playing games, making love—she felt complete assurance. But the sorting out of possibilities and deciding which were probable and which irrational, when she felt less than sure. Such as now. . . . Old -Webbard, the fat blob, had calmed himself and was gloating. Well, let him enjoy himself. . . . She had to get to Earth. She had to see Lionel Abercrombie. Possibly Fotheringay had been hired to kill him, possibly not Possibly Fotheringay knew where to find him, possibly not. Webbard knew Fotheringay; probably he had served as Earl's intermediary. Or possibly Webbard was performing some intricate evolutions of his own. It was plain that, now, her interests were joined with Lionel's, rather than Fotheringay's, because marrying Earl was clearly out of the question. Lionel must stay alive. If this meant double-crossing Fotheringay, too bad for Fotheringay. He could have told her more about Earl's "zoological collection" before he sent her up to marry Earl . . . Of course, she told herself, Fotheringay would have no means of knowing the peculiar use Earl made of his specimens, i

"Well?" asked Webbard with an unpleasant grin.

"When does the next ship leave for Earth?" "The supply barge is heading back tonight" "That's fine. If I can fight off the pilot You can pay me now."

"Pay you? You've only done a day's work. You owe the station for transportation, your uniform, your meals—"

"Oh, never mind." Jean turned, pulled herself into the corridor, went to her room, packed her belongings.

Mrs. Blaiskell pushed her head through the door. "Oh, there you are . . ." She sniffed. "Mr. Earl has been inquiring for you. He wants to see you at once." It was plain that she disapproved.

"Sure," said Jean. "Right away."

Mrs. Blaiskell departed.

Jean pushed herself along the corridor to the loading deck. The barge pilot was assisting in the loading of some empty metal drums. He saw Jean and his face changed. "You again?"

"I'm going back to Earth with you. You were right. I don't like it here."

The pilot nodded sourly. "This time you ride in the storage. That way neither one of us gets hurt. ... I couldn't promise a thing if you're up forward."

"Suits me," said Jean. "I'm going aboard."

"Take-off in an hour."

When Jean reached the Hotel Atlantide in Metropolis she wore a black dress and black pumps which she felt made her look older and more sophisticated. Crossing the lobby she kept wary look-out for the house detective. Sometimes they nursed unkind suspicions toward unaccompanied young girls. It was best to avoid the police, keep them at a distance. When they found that she had no father, no mother, no guardian, their minds were apt to turn to some dreary government institution. On several occasions rather extreme measures to ensure her independence had been necessary.

But the Hotel Atlantide detective took no heed of the black-haired girl quiedy crossing the lobby, if he saw her at all. The lift attendant observed that she seemed restless, as with either a great deal of pent enthusiasm or nervousness. A porter on the thirtieth floor noticed her searching for an apartment number and mentally labelled her a person unfamiliar with the hotel. A chambermaid watched her press the bell at Apartment 3001, saw the door open, saw the girl jerk back in surprise, then slowly enter the apartment Strange, thought the chambermaid, and speculated mildly for a few moments. Then she went to recharge the foam dispensers in the public bathrooms and the incident passed from her mind.

The apartment was spacious, elegant, expensive. Windows overlooked Central Gardens and the Morison Hall of Equity behind. The furnishings were the work of a professional decorator, harmonious and sterile; a few incidental objects around the room, however, hinted of a woman's presence. But Jean saw no woman. There was only herself and Fotheringay.

Fotheringay wore subdued gray flannels and dark necktie. In a crowd of twenty people he would vanish.

After an instant of surprise he stood back. "Come in."

Jean darted glances around the room, half-expecting a fat crumpled body. But possibly Lionel had not been at home, and Fotheringay was waiting.

"Well," he asked, "what brings you here?" He was watching her covertly. "Take a seat."

Jean sank into a chair, chewed at her hp. Fotheringay watched her cat-like. Walk carefully. She prodded her mind. What legitimate excuse did she have for visiting Lionel? Perhaps Fotheringay had expected her to double-cross him . . . Where was Hammond? Her neck tingled. Eyes were on her neck. She looked around quickly.

Someone in the hall tried to dodge out of sight. Not quickly enough. Inside Jean's brain a film of ignorance broke to release a warm soothing flood of knowledge.

She smiled, her sharp white little teeth showing between her hps. It had been a fat woman whom she had seen in the hall, a very fat woman, rosy, flushed, quivering.

"What are you smiling at?" inquired Fotheringay.

She used his own technique. "Are you wondering who gave me your address?"

"Obviously Webbard."

Jean nodded. "Is the lady your wife?" Fotheringay's chin raised a hair's-breadth. "Get to the point."

"Very well." She hitched herself forward. There was still a possibility that she was making a terrible mistake, but the risk must be taken. Questions would reveal her uncertainty, diminish her bargaining position. "How much money can you raise—right now? Cash?"

"Ten or twenty thousand."

Her face must have showed disappointment.

"Not enough?"

"No. You sent me on a bum steer." Fotheringay sat silendy.

"Earl would no more make a pass at me than bite off his tongue. His taste in women is—like yours."

Fotheringay displayed no irritation. "But two years ago—"

"There's a reason for that." She raised her eyebrows ruefully. "Not a nice reason."

"WelL get on with it."

"He liked Earth girls because they were freaks. In his opinion, naturally. Earl likes freaks."

Fotheringay rubbed his chin, watching her with blank wide eyes. "I never thought of that"

"Your scheme might have worked out if Earl were halfway right-side up. But I just don't have what it takes."

^v Fotheringay smiled frostily. "You didn't come here to tell me that."

"No. I know how Lionel Abercrombie can get the station for himself ... Of course your name is Fotheringay."

"If my name is Fotheringay, why did you come here looking for me?"

Jean laughed, a gay ringing laugh. "Why do you think I'm looking for you? I'm looking for Lionel Abercrombie. Fotheringay is no use to me unless I can marry Earl. I can't I haven't got enough of that stuff. Now I'm looking for Lionel Abercrombie."

VIII

Fothebtngay tapped a weE-manicured finger on a well-flannelled knee, and said quiedy, "I'm Lionel Abercrombie." "How do I know you are?"

He tossed her a passport She glanced at it, tossed it back.

"Okay. Now—you have twenty thousand. That's not e-nough. I want two million ... If you haven't got it, you haven't got it. I'm not unreasonable. But I want to make sure I get it when you do have it. So—you'll write me a deed, a bill of sale, something legal that gives me your interest in Abercrombie Station. Ill agree to sell it back to you for two million dollars."

Fotheringay shook his head. "That land of agreement is binding on me but not on you. You're a minor."

Jean said, "The sooner I get clear of Abercrombie the better. I'm not greedy. You can have your billion dollars. I merely want two million . . . Incidentally, how do ypu figure a billion? Webbard says the whole set-up is only worth a hundred million."

Lionel's mouth twisted in a wintry smile. "Webbard didn't include the holdings of the Abercrombie guests. Some very rich people are fat The fatter they get, the less they like life on Earth."

"They could always move to another resort station."

Lionel shook his head. "It's not the same atmosphere. Abercrombie is Fatman's world. The one small spot in all the universe where a fat man is proud of his weight."

There was a wistful overtone in his voice. Peculiar, she thought it.

Jean said sofdy. "And you're lonesome for Abercrombie yourself."

Lionel smiled grimly. "Strange."

Jean shifted in her chair. "Now well go to a lawyer. I know a good one. Richard Mycroft. I warjt this deed drawn up without loopholes. Maybe I'll have to find myself a guardian, a trustee."

"You don't need a. guardian."

Jean smiled complacendy. "For a fact, I don't."

"You still haven't told me what this project consists of."

"Ill tell you when I have the deed. You don't lose a thing giving away property you don't own. And after you give it away, it's to my interest to help you get it."

Lionel rose to his feet "It had better be good."

"It will be."

The fat woman came into the room. She was obviously an Earth girl, bewildered and delighted by Lionel's attentions. Looking at Jean her face became clouded with jealousy.

Out in the corridor Jean said wisely, "You get her up to Abercrombie, shell be throwing you over for one of those fat rascals."

"Shut upl" said Lionel, in a voice like the whetting of a scythe.

The pilot of the supply barge said sullenly, "I don't know about this."

Lionel asked quietly, "You like your job?"

The pilot muttered churlishly, but made no further protest. Lionel buckled himself into the seat beside him. Jean, the horse-faced man named Hammond, two elderly men of professional aspect and uneasy manner settled themselves in the cargo hold.

The ship lifted free of the dock, pushed up above the atmosphere, lined out into Abercrombie's orbit.

The station floated ahead, glinting in the sunlight.

The barge landed on the cargo deck, the handlers tugged it into its socket, the port sighed open.

"Come on," said Lionel. "Make it fast. Let's get it over with." He tapped Jean's shoulder. "You're first."

She led the way up the main core. Fat guests floated down past them, light and round as soap-bubbles, their faces masks of surprise at the sight of so many bone-people.

Up the core, along the vinculum into the Abercrombie private sphere. They passed the Pleasaunce, where Jean caught a glimpse of Mrs. Clara, fat as a blutwurst, with the obsequious Webbard.

They passed Mrs. Blaiskell. "Why, Mr. Lionel!" she gasped. "Well, I never, I never!"

Lionel brushed past. Jean, looking over her shoulder into his face, felt a qualm. Something dark smouldered in his eyes. Triumph, malice, vindication, cruelty. Something not quite human. If nothing else, Jean was extremely human, and was wont to feel uneasy in the presence of outworld life . . . She felt uneasy now.

"Hurry," came Lionel's voice. "Hurry."

Past Mrs. Clara's chambers, to the door of Earl's bedroom. Jean pressed the button; the door slid open.

Earl stood before a mirror, tying a Ted and blue silk cravat around his bullneck. He wore a suit of pearl-gray gabardine, cut very full and padded to make his body look round and soft. He saw Jean in the mirror, behind her the hard face of his brother Lionel. He whirled, lost his footing, drifted ineffectually into the air.

Lionel laughed. "Get him, Hammond. Bring him along."

Earl stormed and raved. He was the master here, everybody get out. He'd have them all jailed, killed. He'd kill them himself. ..

Hammond searched him for weapons, and the two professional-looking men stood uncomfortably in the background muttering to each other.

"Look here, Mr. Abercrombie," one of them said at last "We can't be a party to violence . .."

"Shut up," said Lionel. "You're here as witnesses, as medical men. You're being paid to look, that's all. If you don't like what you see, that's too bad." He motioned to Jean. "Get going."

Jean pushed herself to the study door. Earl called out sharply. "Get away from there, get away! That's private, that's my private study!"

Jean pressed her lips together. It was impossible to avoid feeling pity for poor gnarled Earl. But—she thought of his "zoological collection." Firmly she covered the electric eye, pressed the button. The door swung open, revealing the glory of the stained glass glowing with the fire of heaven.

Jean pushed herself to the furry two-legged animal. Here she waited.

Earl made some difficulty about coming through the door. Hammond manipulated his elbows; Earl belched up a hoarse screech, flung himself forward, panting like a winded chicken.

Lionel said, "Don't fool with Hammond, Earl. He likes hurting people."

The two witnesses muttered wrathfully. Lionel quelled them with a look.

Hammond seized Earl by the seat of the pants, raised him over his head, walked with magnetic shoes gripping the deck across the cluttered floor of the study, with Earl flailing and groping helplessly.

Jean fumbled in the fretwork over the panel into the annex. Earl screeched, "Keep your hands out of there I Oh, how you'll pay, how you'll pay for this, how you'll payl" His voice hoarsened, he broke into sobs.

Hammond shook him, like a terrier shaking a rat.

Earl sobbed louder.

The sound grated Jean's ears. She frowned, found the button, pushed. The panel flew open.

They all marched into the bright annex, Earl completely broken, sobbing and pleading.

"There it is," said Jean.

Lionel swung his gaze along the collection of monstrosities. The out-world things, the dragons, basilisks, griffins, the armored insects, the great-eyed serpents, the tangles of muscle, the coiled creatures of fang, brain, cartilage. And then there were the human creatures, no less grotesque and feverish. Lionel's eyes stopped at the fat man.

He looked at Earl, who had fallen numbly silent.

"Poor old Hugo," said Lionel. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Earl."

Earl made a sighing sound.

Lionel said, "But Hugo is dead . . . He's as dead as any of the other things. Right, Earl?" He looked at Jean. "Right?"

"I guess that's right," said Jean uneasily. She found no pleasure baiting Earl.

"Of course he's dead," panted Earl.

Jean went to the little key controlling the magnetic field.

Earl screamed, "You witchl You witchl"

Jean depressed the key. There was a musical hum, a hissing, a smell of ozone. A moment passed. There came a sigh of air. The cubicle opened with a sucking sound. Hugo drifted into the room.

He twitched his arms, gagged and retched, made a thin crying sound in his throat.

Lionel turned to his two witnesses. "Is this man alive?"

They muttered excitedly. "Yes, yes!"

Lionel turned to Hugo. "Tell them your name."

Hugo whispered feebly, pressed his elbows to his body, pulled up his atrophied little legs, tried to assume a foetal position.

Lionel asked the two men, "Is this man sane?"

The fidgeted. "That of course is hardly a matter we can determine off-hand." There was further mumbling about tests, cephalographs, reflexes.

Lionel waited a moment. Hugo was gurgling, crying like a baby. "Well—is he sane?"

The doctors said, "He's suffering from severe shock. The deep-freeze classically has the effect of disturbing the synapses—"

Lionel asked sardonically, "Is he in his right mind?" "Well-no."

Lionel nodded. "In that case—you're looking at the new master of Abercrombie Station."

Earl protested, "You can't get away with that, Lionel! He's been insane a long time, and you've been off the station!"

Lionel grinned wolfishly. "Do you want to take the matter into Admiralty Court at Metropolis?"

Earl fell silent. Lionel looked at the doctors, who were whispering heatedly together.

"Talk to him," said Lionel. "Satisfy yourself whether he's in his right mind or not,"

The doctors dutifully addressed Hugo, who made mewing sounds. They came to an uncomfortable but definite decision. "Clearly this man is not able to conduct bis own affairs."

Earl pettishly wrenched himself from Hammond's grasp. "Let go of me."

"Better be careful," said Lionel. "I don't think Hammond likes you."

"I don't like Hammond," said Earl viciously. "I don't like anyone." His voice dropped in pitch. "I don't even like myself." He stood staring into the cubicle which Hugo had vacated.

Jean sensed a tide of recklessness rising in him. She opened her mouth to speak-But Earl had already started.

Time stood still. Earl seemed to move with bewildering slowness, but the others stood as if frozen in jelly.

Time turned on for Jean. "I'm getting out of here!" she gasped, knowing what the half-crazed Earl was about to do.

Earl ran down the line of his monsters, magnetic shoes slapping on the deck. As he ran, he flipped switches. When he finished he stood at the far end of the room. Behind him things came to life.

Hammond gathered himself, plunged after. A black arm apparently groping at random caught hold of his leg. There was a dull cracking sound. Hammond bawled out in terror.

Jean started through the door. She jerked back, shrieking. Facing her was the eight-foot gorilla thing with the French-poodle face. Somewhere along the line Earl had thrown a switch relieving it from magnetic catalepsy. The black eyes shone, the mouth dripped, the hands clenched and unclenched. Jean shrank back.

There were horrible noises from behind. She heard Earl gasping in sudden fear. But she could not turn her eyes from the gorilla-thing. It drifted into the room. The black dog-eyes looked deep into Jean's. She could not move! A great black arm, groping apparendy at random, fell past Jean's shoulder, touched the gorilla-thing.

There was screaming bedlam. Jean pressed herself against the wall. A green flapping creature, coilin<? and uncoiling, twisted out into the study, smashing racks, screens, displays, sending books, minerals, papers, mechanisms, cases and cabinets floating and crashing. The gorilla-thing came after, one of its arms twisted and loose. A rolling flurry of webbed feet, scales, muscular tail and a human body followed—Hammond and a griffin from a world apdy named Test-hole".

Jean darted through the door, thought to hide in the alcove. Outside, on the deck, was Earl's space-boat. She shoved herself across to the port.

Behind, frantically scrambling, came one of the doctors that Lionel had brought along for witnesses. Jean called, "Over here, over herel" The doctor threw himself into the space-boat Jean crouched by the port, ready to slam it at any approach of danger . . . She sighed. All her hopes, plans, future had exploded. Death, debacle, catastrophe were hers instead.

She turned to the doctor. "Where's your partner?"

"Dead! Oh Lord, oh Lord, what can we do?"

Jean turned her head to look at him, hps curling in disgust Then she saw him in a new, flattering, light. A disinterested witness. He looked like money. He could testify that for at least thirty seconds Lionel had been master of Abercrom-bie Station. That thirty seconds was enough to transfer title to her. Whether Hugo were sane or not didn't matter because Hugo had died thirty seconds before the metal frog with the knife-edged scissor-bill had fixed on Lionel's throat

Best to make sure. "Listen," said Jean. "This may be important. Suppose you were to testify in court. Who died first, Hugo or Lionel?"

The doctor sat quiet a moment. "Why, Hugo! I saw his neck broken while Lionel was still alive."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yes," He tried to pull himself together. "We must do something."

"Okay," said Jean. "What shall we do?" "I don't know."

From the study came a gurgling sound, and an instant later, a woman's scream. "God," said Jean. "The things have gotten out into the inner bedroom . . . What they won't do to Abercrombie Station . . ." She lost control and retched against the hull of the boat.

A brown face like a poodle-dog's, spotted red with blood,

peered around the comer at them. Steathily it pulled itself closer.

Mesmerized, Jean saw that now its arm had been twisted entirely off. It darted, forward. Jean fell back, slammed the port. A heavy body thudded against the metal.

They were closed in Earl's space-boat. The man had fainted. Jean said, "Don't die on me, fellow. You're worth money. . . ."

Faintly through the metal came crashing and thumping. Then came the muffled spatttt of proton guns.

The guns sounded with monotonous regularity. Spatttt ... Spattt. . . spattt. .. spattt.. . spattt...

Then there was utter silence.

Jean inched open the port. The alcove was empty. Across her vision drifted the broken body of the gorilla-thing.

Jean ventured into the alcove, looked out into the study. Thirty feet distant stood Webbard, planted like a pirate captain on the bridge of his ship. His face was white and wadded; pinched lines ran from his nose around his nearly invisible mouth. He carried two big proton guns; the orifices of both were white-hot.

He saw Jean; his eyes took on a glitter. "Youl It's you that's caused all this, your sneaking and spying!"

He jerked up his proton guns.

"No!" cried Jean, "It's not my fault!"

Lionel's voice came weakly. "Put down those guns, Webbard." Clutching his throat he pushed himself into the study. "That's the new owner," he croaked sardonically. "You wouldn't want to murder your boss, would you?"

Webbard blinked in astonishment. "Mr. Lionel!"

"Yes," said Lionel. "Home again . . . And there's quite a mess to clean up, Webbard ..."

Jean looked at the bank-book. The figures burnt into the plastic, spread almost all the way across the tape. $2,000,000.00.

Mycrof t puffed on his pipe, looked out the window.

"There's a matter you should be considering," said My-croft. "That's the investment of your money. You won't be able to do it by yourself; other parties will insist on dealing with a responsible entity—that is to say, a trustee or a guardian."

"I don't know much about these things," said Jean. "I— rather assumed that you'd take care of them."

Mycroft reached over, tapped the dotde out of his pipe. "Don't you want to?" asked Jean.

Mycroft said with a compressed distant smile. "Yes, I want to . . . I'll be glad to administer a two million dollar estate. In effect, 111 become your legal guardian, until you're of age. Well have to get a court order of appointment. The effect of the order will be to take control of the money out of your hands; we can include in the articles, however, a clause guaranteeing you the full income—which I assume is what you want. It should come to—oh, say fifty thousand a year after taxes."

"That suits me," said Jean listlessly. "I'm not too interested in anything right now . . . There seems to be something of a let-down."

Mycroft nodded. "I can see how that's possible."

Jean said, "I have the money. I've always wanted it, now I have it. And now—" she held out her hands, raised her eyebrows. "It's just a number in a bank-book . . . Tomorrow morning 111 get up and say to myself, 'What shall I do today? Shall I buy a house? Shall I order a thousand dollars worth of clothes? Shall I start out on a two year tour of Argo NavisP* And the answer will come out, 'No, the hell with it all.'"

"What you need," said Mycroft, "are some friends, nice girls your own age."

Jean's mouth moved in rather a sickly smile. "I'm afraid we wouldn't have much in common . . . It's probably a good idea, but—it wouldn't work out." She sat passively in the chair, her wide mouth drooping.

Mycroft noticed that in repose it was a sweet generous mouth.

She said in a low voice, "I can't get out of my head the idea that somewhere in the universe I must have a mother and a father. . . ."

Mycroft rubbed his chin. "People who'd abandon a baby in a saloon aren't worth thinking about, Jean."

"I know," she said in a dismal voice. "Oh Mr. Mycroft, I'm so damn lonely. . . ." Jean was crying, her head buried in her arms.

Mycroft irresolutely put his hand on her shoulder, patted awkwardly.

After a moment she said, "You'll think I'm an awful fool."

"No," said Mycroft gruffly. "I think nothing of the kind. I wish that I. . . ." He could not put it into words.

She pulled herself together, rose to her feet. "Enough of this . . ." She turned his head up, kissed his chin. "You're really very nice, Mr. Mycroft . . . But I don't want sympathy. I hate it. I'm used to looking out for myself."

Mycroft returned to his seat, loaded his pipe to keep his fingers busy. Jean picked up her little hand-bag. "Right now I've got a date with a couturier named André. He's going to dress me to an inch of my life. And then I'm going to—" She broke off. "I'd better not tell you. You'd be alarmed and shocked."

He cleared his throat. "I expect I would."

She nodded brightly. "So long." And left his office.

Mycroft cleared his throat again, hitched up his trousers, settled his jacket, returned to his work . . . Somehow it appeared dull, drab, gray. His head ached.

He said, "I feel like going out and getting drunk. . . ."

Ten minutes passed. His door opened. Jean looked in.

"Hello, Mr. Mycroft."

"Hello, Jean."

"I changed my mind. I thought it would be nicer if I took you out to dinner, and then maybe we could go to a show . . . Would you like that?"

"Very much," said Mycroft

part two

Mr. Mycroft ran a hand through his gray hair and said in a wry voice, "I make no pretense of understanding you."

In the big leather chair reserved for the relaxation of Mycroft's hiph-strung clients Jean fidgeted, stretched her fingers, examined the backs of her hands. "I don't even understand myself."

Through the window she watched a tomato-red Marshall Moon-chaser fleeting along the blue April sky. "Money hasn't affected me quite the way I expected . . . I've always wanted a little boat like that. I could buy a dozen if I liked, but—" she shook her head, eyes still out in the blue distance.

Mycroft recalled the first time he had seen her: wary and wild, characterized by a precocious feral quality, a recklessness that made ordinary women seem pastel and insipid. Mycroft smiled primly. He could hardly say that she had become dull. She still had her elan, her unnerving charm. She was jet and ivory and pale rose; her mouth was wide and flexible, her little teeth were white and sharp; she carried herself with a swash-buckling fervor—but something was gone, and not necessarily for the worse.

"Nothing's like what I thought it would be," said Jean. "Clothes. . . ." She looked down at her dark green slacks, her black pullover sweater. "These are good enough. Men . . ." Mycroft watched her attentively. "They're all the same, silly jackasses."

Mycroft made a small involuntary grimace, settled himself in his chair. At fifty he was three times her age.

"The lovers are bad," said Jean, "but I'm used to them, I've never lacked there. But the other ones, the financiers, the sharp-shooters—they upset me. Like spiders."

Mycroft made haste to explain. "It's inevitable. They're after anyone with wealth. Cranks—promoters—confidence men —they won't leave you alone. Refer them to me. As your guardian I can dispose of them quickly."

"When I was poor," said Jean mournfully, "I wanted so many things. And now—" she swung out her arms in a gesture of abandon "—I can buy and buy and buy. And I don't want anything. I can have anything I want, and it's almost as if I had it already ... I'd rather like to make some more money ... I guess what I've got is like the first taste of blood to a wolf."

Mycroft sat back in alarm. "My dear girl, that's the occupational disease of old menl Not for a—"

Jean said fretfully, "You act, Mr. Mycroft, as if I'm not human." This was true; Mycroft instinctively behaved toward Jean as he might toward a beautiful, alarming and unpredictable animal.

"It's not that I especially want more money ... I suppose the fact is that I'm bored."

Worse and worse, thought Mycroft. Bored people got into mischief. Desperately he searched his mind. "Ah—there's always the theater. You could finance a production and perhaps you'd like to act in it yourself?"

"Pish," said Jean. "Bunch of fakers!"

"You might go to school?"

"It sounds very tiring, Mr. Mycroft."

"I suppose it would be . . ."

"I'm not the scholastic type. And there's something else on my mind. It's probably foolish and pointless, but I can't seem to get away from it. I'd like to know about my father and mother . . . I've always felt bitter toward them—but suppose I have been kidnaped or stolen? If that were the case, they'd be glad to see me."

Mycroft privately considered such a possibility unlikely. "Well, that's perfectly normal and natural. Well put an investigator on the trail. As I recall, you were abandoned in a saloon on one of the outer worlds."

Jean's eyes had become hard and bright. "At Joe Parlier's Axtec Tavern. Angel City on Codiron."

"Codiron," said Mycroft. "Yes, I know that district very well. As I recall, it's not a large world nor very populous."

"If it's like it was when I left—which was seven years ago—it's backward and old-fashioned. But never mind the investigator. I'd like to look around myself."

Mycroft opened his mouth to cluck disapproval when the door slid back and Ruth, Mycroft's receptionist, looked in.

"Dr. Cholwell to see you." She glanced sharply sidewise at Jean.

"Cholwell?" grunted Mycroft. "I wonder what he wants." "He said that you arranged to have lunch with him." "Yes, that's right. Show him in."

With a final hard glance at Jean, Ruth left the room. Jean said, "Ruth doesn't like me."

Mycroft moved in his chair, embarrassed. "Don't rnind her. She's been with me close to twenty years ... I suppose the sight of a pretty girl in my office disturbs her sense of fitness. Especially—" his ears colored "—one that I take such an interest in."

Jean smiled faindy. "Someday I'll let her find me sitting in your lap."

"No," said Mycroft, arranging the papers on his desk. "I don't think you'd better."

Cholwell came briskly into the room—a man Mycroft's age, lean, bright-eyed, elegant in a jerky bird-like manner. He had a sharp chin, a handsome ruff of silver-gray hair, a long sensitive nose. He was precisely dressed, and on his finger Jean glimpsed the golden orb insignia of the Space-Dwellers Association.

Jean looked away, aware that she did not like Cholwell.

Cholwell stared at Jean, patently amazed. His mouth fell open. He took a short step forward. "What are you doing here?" he asked harshly.

Jean looked at him with wonder. "I'm just talking to Mr. Mycroft . . . Does it matter?"

Cholwell closed his eyes, shook his head as if he were about to faint

Cholwell sank into a chair. "Excuse me," he muttered. "I need a pill . . . It's my little trouble—souvenir of a chlorosis bout in the Mendassir sloebanks." He stole another look at Jean, then pulled his eyes away. His lips moved as if he were silently reciting verse.

Mycroft said tartly, "My ward, Miss Parlier. Dr. Cholwell."

Cholwell regained his composure. "I'm charmed to make your acquaintance." He turned to Mycroft. "You never mentioned such a lovely young obligation."

"Jean's a recent addition. The court appointed me to take care of her money." He said to Jean, "Cholwell hails from your comer of space, at least the last I knew." He turned back to Cholwell. "You're still out at the Rehabilitation Home?"

Cholwell tore his eyes away from Jean. "Not precisely. Yes and no. I live on the old premises, but the Home has been abandoned—oh, a long time."

"Why in heaven's name do you hang on then? As I recall, it's a God-forsaken bleak hole."

Cholwell complacently shook his head. "I don't find it so. The scenery is grand, monumental. And then—welL I have a little venture which keeps me busy."

"Venture?"

Cholwell looked out the window. "I'm, ah, raising chickens. Yes." He nodded. "Chickens." His gaze alternated between Jean and Mycroft. "Indeed, I can offer you opportunity for an excellent investment."

Mycroft grunted. Cholwell continued easily.

"No doubt you've heard tales of a hundred percent profit and thought them pretty wild. Well, naturally I can't go quite that far. To be utterly frank, I'm not sure just what will eventuate. Perhaps nothing. My operation is still experimental; I'm short of capital, you see."

Mycroft stuffed his pipe with tobacco. "You've come to the wrong place, Cholwell." He struck a match, puffed. "But— out of curiosity—just what is your operation?"

Cholwell wet his lips, gazed an instant at the ceiling. "Well, it's modest enough. I've evolved a strain of chickens which prospers remarkably. I want to erect a modem plant. With the proper backing I can deliver chickens around all the Orion Circuit at a price no domestic supplier can meet."

Jean said doubtfully, "I should think that Codiron would be too cold and windy for chickens."

Cholwell shook his head. "I'm in a warm spot under the Balmoral Mountains. One of the old Trotter sites."

"Oh."

"What I'm leading up to is this. I want to take you out on an inspection tour of the premises and you can see for yourself. There'll be no obligation, none whatever."

Mycroft leaned back, looked Cholwell coolly up and down. "Isn't this rather an impulsive offer?"

Jean said, "I've been thinking of going out to Angel City for a visit—"

Mycroft rattled papers on his desk. "It sounds good, Cholwell. I hope you make out. But I've tied Jean's funds up in conservative stuff. She finds her income completely adequate. As far as I'm concerned personally, I'm lucky to pay the rent. So—"

"Of course, of course," said Cholwell. "I'm too hasty, too enthusiastic. It runs away with me at times." He rubbed his chin with his fingers. "You're acquainted with Codiron, Miss Parlier?"

"I was bom in Angel City."

Doctor Cholwell nodded. "Not far from my own holdings
. . . When do you plan to make your visit? Perhaps I
could . . ." His voice faded politely, as if he were proffering
anything Jean could lay her mind to. ^

"I'm not sure when 111 be going out ... In the near future."

Cholwell nodded. "Well, 111 hope to see you again, and perhaps show you around and explain the scope of my work, and then—"

Jean shook her head. "I'm not really interested in chickens—except in the eating line. And anyway Mr. Mycroft has been put in charge of my money. I'm a minor, I'm-not supposed to be responsible. So charm Mr. MycToft, don't waste it on me."

Cholwell took no offense. He nodded gravely. "Well, it's definitely a speculation, and I know Mycroft has to be careful." He looked at his watch. "What about lunch, Mycroft?"

"Ill meet you downstairs in ten minutes."

Cholwell rose to his feet. "Good." He bowed to Jean. "It's been a pleasure meeting you."

After he had departed, Mycroft sank back into his chair, puffed reflectively at his pipe. "Rather an odd chap, old Cholwell. There's a good brain under that fancy exterior, although you wouldn't expect it ... It sounds as if he might have a good proposition with his chickens."

"CooUron's awfully windy and cold," said Jean doubtfully. "A planet like Emeraud or Beau Aire would be better." She considered the far worlds, and all the strange sights, colors, sounds, the mysterious ruins, the bizarre peoples, came rushing into her mind.

In sudden excitement she jumped to her feet.

"Mr. Mycroft, I'm going to leave on the next packet."

"That's tonight."

Jean's face fell. "The next afteT, then."

Mycroft expressionlessly knocked the charge out of his pipe. "I know better than to interfere."

Jean patted his shoulder. "You're really a nice man, Mr. Mycroft. I wish I were as nice as you are."

Looking into the glowing face, Mycroft knew that there would be no more work for him this day.

"Now I've got to run," said Jean. "Ill go right down and book passage." She stretched. "Oh heavens, Mr. Mycroft, I feel better already!"

She left the office, gay and swift as the red Moon-chaser which she had watched across the sky.

Mycroft silentiy put away his papers, rose to his feet, bent over the communicator.

"Ruth, if there's anything urgent 111 be at the club this afternoon, probably in the steam room."

Ruth nodded indignantly to herself. "Little minx! Why won't she stay away, keep to herself? Poor old Mycroft, ..."

III

A community fading from life is a dismal place. The streets become barren of people; the air swims clear overhead with lifeless serenity; the general aspect is between gray and dirty brown. Buildings fall into disrepair: piers crumble, trusses sag, windows gape with holes like black starfish.

The poor sections are abandoned first. The streets become pocked and pitted and littered with bits of yellow paper. The more prosperous districts coast on the momentum of the past, but only a few very old and a few very young people are left, the old with their memories, the young with their wistful daydreams. In attics and storerooms, old gear falls apart, releasing odors of varnish and wood, musty cloth and dry paper.

All during Jean's childhood, Angel City had been succumbing to moribundity and decay. Nearby three old volcanic necks, El Primo, El Panatela, El Tiempo, loomed clumsily on the silver Codiron sky. At one time the rotting shale at their bases had glittered with long hexagonal crystals. These possessed the singular property of converting sound into quick colored flashes of light. In the early times miners went forth at night to fire off guns, and stand watching the swift sparkle responding in a wave down the distance.

With the mines prosperity came to Angel City. Fortunes were founded, ripened, spent. Houses were built, a spaceport established with adequate warehouses, and Angel City became a typical black-planet settlement—like thousands of others in many respects, but still one to itself, with the unique flavor that made it Angel City. The sun, Mintaka Sub-30 was a tiny disk of dazzling blue-white, the sky showed the color of black pearl. Earth vegetation refused the Codiron soil, and instead of geraniums, zinnia, pansies, petunias, growing around the white houses, there were mogadors, pilgrim vine with fluttering bumble-bee fruits, yeasty banks with great masses of bear-fungus.

Then one by one, like a clan of old men dying, the mines gave out and closed—quiedy, apologetically, and Angel

City started on its route to dissolution. The miners left town, the easy-money emporiums closed their doors, paint began peeling from the back-street houses.

But now a wild variable entered the picture: Lake Arkansas.

It spread from Angel City out to the horizon, rusty-green and smooth as a table-top, crusted with two feet of algae, brittle and tough enough to support considerable weight. Idle men looked across the flatness, and thought of wheat: North Africa, the Great Plains, the Ukraine. Botanists were called in from Earth and not only evolved strains of wheat to thrive on Codiron's mineral balance, to resist Codiron's soil viruses, but also com, cane, citrus, melons and garden truck.

The course of Angel City's development altered. And when the wheezing taxi-boat lifted from the space-port and slanted down over Tobacco Butte, Jean was immeasurably surprised. Where she had remembered raffishness and grime she found a neat farming community, clean and apparendy prosperous.

The pilot turned in his seat. "Where will I take you, miss?"

"To the hotel. Is it still Polton's Inn?"

The pilot nodded. "There's Polton's and then there's a new place downtown, the Soone House, sort of posh and expensive."

"Take me to Polton's," said Jean. It was no part of her plan to be conspicuous.

The pilot turned her an appraising glance. "You've been here before, seems like."

Jean bit her Up in annoyance. She wanted to be known as a stranger; she did not care to be associated with four dead men of seven years ago. "My father worked in the mines and he's told me about Angel City."

In all probability she was safe from recognition. Four deaths in the Angel City of seven years ago would have caused a week's sensation and then passed out of mind, to be blended with a hundred other killings. No one would think to connect Miss Alice Young, as she had decided to call herself, with the ragged wide-eyed creature that had been Jean Pariier at the age of ten. However—it was just as well to play safe. "Yes, I'll go to Polton's," said Jean.

Polton's Inn was a long ramshackle shed-roof building on a little rise overlooking the town, with a wide verandah and the front overgrown with blue pilgrim vine. In the first days of Angel City it had served as a bunk-house for miners; then as conditions became settled, Polton had added a few refinements and set himself up as innkeeper. In Jean's recollection he was a bent crabbed old man whose eyes seemed always to search the ground. He had never married and did all his own work, scorning even a scullery boy.

The pilot dropped the boat to the packed soil in front of Polton's office, turned to help, but Jean had already jumped like a cat to the ground. She ran up on the verandah, forgetting her determination to act the sedate young lady.

Polton was standing on a corner of the verandah, even more bent and crabbed than Jean had remembered.

"Well," he said in a rasping ugly voice, "you're back again. You've got your nerve with you."

Jean stared at him, drained of feeling. She opened her mouth to speak, but found no words.

"You pick up your grip," said Polton, "and get on out here. I'm running a hotel, not a madhouse. Maybe that new place downtown will put up with your hijinks. Me, I'm once bitten, then I'm shy twice."

It came to Jean that he couldn't possibly remember her from seven years back; he must be confusing her with a more recent guest. She noticed that his cheeks, near the outside comer of each eye, bulged with the tiny artificial reservoirs for aqueous humor; by contracting his cheek muscles he could pump fluid into his eyeball, thus correcting for far-sightedness. The fact seemed to indicate that his sight was not the best. Jean said with an air of sweet reason, "Mr. Polton, you're mistaking me for someone else."

"Oh no I'm not," snapped Polton, raising his lip in wolfish looseness. "I got your name on the register if you want to look. Miss Sunny Mathison you call yourself, and your fingerprints too—they show who you are."

"It wasn't mel" cried Jean. "My name is Alice Young!"

Polton made a scornful sound. "I've just spent four hundred dollars to put pumps into my old eyes. I can see like a telescope. Do you think I'm making a mistake? I don't. . . . Now clear off the premises. I don't want your kind around here." He stood there glowering at her, until she turned away.

Jean shrugged, stepped forlornly back into the cab.

The pilot said sympathetically, "Old Polton's half-cracked, that's welKknown. And the Soone House is a lot better place anyhow . . ."

"Okay," said Jean, "let's try the Soone House."

The cab coasted down from the height. Before them spread first the town, then Lake Arkansas, .an unfamiliar checker of yellow, dark green, light green, brown and black, and finally, rising from the horizon, the steel backdrop of the sky. The blue-hot spark of Mintaka Sub-30 hung at high noon, glittered in the cab's plastic canopy and into the comer of Jean's eye.

She traced out the familiar patterns of the town: Central Square, with the concrete dance pavilion, the blue-painted courthouse and jail, with Paradise Alley ducking furtively behind. And that angular brown facade almost out at the edge of town—that was Joe Parlier's old Aztec Tavern.

The cab settled to a plat at the rear of the new Soone House, and the pilot carried Jean's modest luggage to the side entrance. The hotel was obviously new, and made superficial pretensions to luxury, achieving only a rather ridiculous straddle between metropolitan style and the hard fact of its location in a small back-planet town. There was a fine floor of local moss agate and hand-padded mosaic-rugs from one of the cheap-labor planets, a dozen Earth palms in celadon pots. But there was no lift to the second and third floors and the porter's shoes were noticeably scuffed.

The lobby was empty except for the clerk and a man who stood talking with apparent urgency. Jean stopped short in the doorway. The man was lean and bird-like, wore his clothes with something of the same elegance that the hotel wore its mosaic rugs and Earth palms. Cholwell.

Jean calculated. It was evident that he had come out on a faster ship than hers, possibly the mail express. While she hesitated, Cholwell turned, looked at her, looked once again. His mouth snapped shut, his eyebrows met in a stiff angry bar. He took three strides forward and Jean ducked back, thinking he meant to strike her.

Cholwell said in a furious voice, "I've been looking all over town for youl"

Jean's curiosity was greater than her alarm and anger. "Well-here I am. What of it?"

Cholwell looked past her, out into the street, breathing hard controlled breaths. "You came alone?"

Jean said with narrowed eyes, "What business is it of yours?"

Cholwell blinked and his mouth set in an ugly spiteful line.

"When I get you back at the compound 111 show you what business it is of mine!"

Jean said icily, "Just what in the world are you talking about?"

"What's your name?" Cholwell cried furiously. "Let me see your—" he snatched her arm, turned over her hand, looked at the underside of her wrist.

He stared in unbelief, looked into her face, stared back at her wrist.

Jean pulled away. "Are you crazy? Life among the chickens seems to have rattled you!"

"Chickens?" He frowned. "Chickens?" His face went void of expression. Oh ... Of course. How stupid. You're Miss Jean Parlier, and you're visiting Angel City ... I didn't expect you for another week—the next packet,"

"Who did you think I was?" she asked resentfully.

Cholwell cleared his throat. Anger had given way to solicitous courtesy with startling swiftness. "It's a combination of poor vision and poor lighting. I have a niece close to your age and for a moment—" he paused delicately.

Jean glanced at her wrist. "How is it that you're not acquainted with her name?"

Cholwell said easily, "It's a little joke we have between us." He laughed self-consciously. "One of those foolish family poke, you know."

"I wonder if it was your niece that got me slung out of old Polton's place."

Cholwell became rigid. "What did Polton say?"

"He insisted that he was running a hotel, not a madhouse. He said he wouldn't put up with any more of my Tiijinks.'

Cholwell's fingers fluttered up and down his coat. "Old Pol-ton, I'm afraid, is more than a little contentious." A new expression came to his face, eager gallantry. "Now that you're here on Codiron, I can't wait to show you my establishment. You and—my niece will surely become fast friends."

"I'm not so sure. We're too much alike, if old Polton is hitting at all close to the truth."

Cholwell made a sound of protestation in his throat.

Jean asked, "Just what is your niece's name, Mr. Cholwell?"

Cholwell hesitated. "It's Martha. And I'm sure Polton was exaggerating. Martha is quiet and gende." He nodded emphatically. "I can depend on Martha."

Jean shrugged. And now Cholwell appeared to be lost in thought. He moved his elbows resdessly in and out from his body, nodded his head. At last he appeared to reach a decision. "I must be on my way, Miss Parlier. But 111 look you up on my next visit into Angel City." He bowed, departed.

Jean turned to the clerk. "I want a room . . . Does Mr. Cholwell come to town very often?"

"No-o-o," said the clerk hesitantly. "Not as often as he might."

"And his niece?"

"We see even less of her. In fact," the clerk coughed, "you might say we seldom see her."

Jean looked at him sharply. "Have you ever seen her?"

The clerk coughed again. "Well—actually no . . . Myself, I think Mr. Cholwell would be wiser to move into town, perhaps take a nice suite here at the hotel."

"Why so?"

"Well—Cornwall Valley is very wild, up under the Balmoral Mountains, very wild and primitive, now that they've abandoned the iold Rehabilitation Home. No one near him for miles, in case of emergency . . ."

"Odd place for a chicken ranch," suggested Jean.

The clerk shrugged, as if to emphasize that it was not his place to gossip about patrons of the hotel. "Did you wish to register?"

Jean changed from her gray travel gabardines into quiet dark blue and wandered along Main Street. There was a new spirit in the air, but under a few cosmetic applications of glass and stainless metal, Angel City was almost as she remembered ft. Faces passed that she seemed to recognize from the old days, and one or two of these faces regarded her curiously—inconclusive in itself; she was accustomed to the feel of eyes.

At the old city courthouse and jail, a building of solid blue-painted stone-foam from the early days, she turned to the right down Paradise Alley. A small constriction formed in her throat; this was the scene of her ragged and miserable youth .. .

"Pish," said Jean. "Enough of this sentimentality. Although I suppose it's for a sentimental reason that I'm here in the first place. Why bother with a father and mother otherwise?" She considered herself in the light of a sentimentalist, with detached amusement, then returned to the eventual discovery of her parents. "It's likely 111 stir up trouble. If they're poor they'll expect me to support them . . ." She smiled, and her little teeth gleamed. "They 11 expect quite a while." It occurred to her that perhaps malice was at the bottom of her mission: she pictured herself confronting a sullen man and woman, and flaunting her prosperity. "You dropped two million dollars when you dropped me on Joe Parlier's pool table."

But more likely than not, her parents, together or on then-separate ways, had vanished off among the illimitable dark vistas of the human universe; then it became a problem of following a seventeen-year-old trail among the stars and planets . . . Joe Parlier might have told her of her parentage; more than once he had hinted of his knowledge. But Joe Parlier was dead, seven years dead, and Jean felt no slightest pang of regret. Sober he had been surly and heavy-handed; drunk, he was lascivious, wild and dangerous.

When she was nine he had started to handle her; soon she learned to hide under the saloon whenever she saw him drink. Once he had tried to follow her, crawling on his stomach. With an old chair leg she beat at his sweating face, jabbed at his eyes, until mad with rage he backed out to find his gun. She had scurried to another hiding place, and returned to her garret because there was no other place for her to go.

Next morning he had slouched up to her, his face still scratched and bruised. She had a knife and stood her ground, pale, set, desperate. But he kept his distance, railing, taunting. "Sure you're a little devil and sure I'm the only pa you got—but I know more'n I let on. And anytime there comes a showdown I know where to go. I can bring it home too, and then it'll go hard on someone."

But she had killed Joe Parlier with his own gun, Joe and three of his drunken cronies, before he had ever told what he knew.

Down Paradise Alley she walked, and there it was ahead of her, Joe Parlier's saloon, the old Aztec Tavern, and changed by not a line or a board. The paint was duller and the swinging doors more battered, but even out in the street the smell of tobacco, beer, wine and spirits brought back hard and clear the first ten years of her life. She raised her eyes, up to the window under the gable—her private little oudook, down into the street and across to Dion Mulroney's second-hand store.

Joe Parlier was dead, but he had spoken of proof and tapped his old brown wallet with heavy significance. Perhaps his effects had not been destroyed, and here would be her first goal.

She slipped demurely into the saloon.

There were a few minor changes, but in general the tavern was as she remembered it. The bar ran down the room to the left; behind were six large color transparencies set into the wall like stained glass windows. Each depicted a nude woman in an artistic pose against a background intended to represent outworld scenery. A crudely painted legend above read, "Beauty Among the Planets."

Tables occupied the right side of the room; above on a shelf were dusty photographs of space-ships and models of the four Gray Line packets serving Codiron, the Bucyrus, the Orestes, the Prometheus and the Icarus. At the back were the two dilapidated pool tables, a line of mechanical game machines, a vendor of dry stimulants and narcotics, and a juke-box.

Jean anxiously scanned the faces along the bar, but recognized none of the old-time habitues. She slid up on a seat near the door.

The bartender wiped his hands on his towel, elevated his jaw, strode toward her. He was a striking young man with dark brown skin and crisp wheat-blond hair. He evidendy thought well of his aquiline profile and emphasized his muscular torso by the tight fit of his shirt. Vain, silly, single-minded, thought Jean; no doubt fancied himself as a lady-killer with his magnificent dark skin and bright hair.

He swaggered to a stop before her, looked her over with heavy-lidded eyes. Along the bar, faces turned, the hum of conversation halted.

The young bartender said, "Whatll it be?"

"Just plain lemon fizz."

He leaned confidentially closer. "I'll let you in on a Iitde secret. Better take orange."

"Why?" Jean asked breathlessly.

"We don't have no lemon." And he slapped the towel into his hand.

"Okay." Jean nodded. "Orange."

Ten minutes later he had made a date. His name was Gem Morales, he lived at Hot-shot Carlson's, and he worked day shift at the Aztec.

Jean said that she had lost her way; she had been trying to find her uncle, but somehow had missed him.

Oh, said Gem Morales, who had been wondering.

Jean rose to leave, and put a dime on the counter. Gem flipped it into the cash drawer. "Eight o'clock, don't forget."

Jean forced a bright smile. Normally she liked handsome young men. She admired hard young bodies, the feel of muscular hands, breezy masculine egos. But Gem Morales jarred her. He was cocksure, flip and brassy, without the redeeming qualities of intelligence and humor.

He arrived to keep bis date a studious twenty minutes late, and swaggered across the lobby to where she sat reading a magazine. He wore an extreme suit of fawn plion, with copper piping; Jean was in modest dark blue and white.

He took her to a smart little air-boat four or five years old, and she saw with a twinge of wry amusement that it was a Marshall Moon-chaser of the model she herself coveted. Dam it, back on Earth, -first thing she'd do would be to buy herself a shiny new air-boat.

"Jump in, honey. We fly high, fly low, we got half a planet to cover, and there's only fourteen hours to Codiron night."

The boat growled up with a lunge that pressed Jean back into the foam, then levelled off and flew through the iron-colored night. Direcdy above hung Codiron's lone satellite, small bright Sadiron. Below were the black buttes, the desolate mountains, the tundras wadded over with olive-drab bear-fungus. Once they skimmed over a dreary little settlement, marked by a line of yellow fights; a few minutes later a faint glow in the south indicated the location of Delta, Codiron's largest city.

"Gem," said Jean, "is your home here in Angel City?"

He snorted with indignation. "Me? Here? Gadl I should say not. I'm from Brackstell on Alnitak Five."

"How come you're out here then?"

He jerked his shoulders flippandy. "Got into a little trouble. Guy figured I wasn't as tough as I said I was. He was wrong, i was right."

He slipped his arm around her. She said, "Gem, I need help."

"Sure, anything you say. But later. Let's talk about us." "No, Gem, I'm serious."

He made a cautious inquiry. "How do you mean, help? What can I do?"

She wove him a tale with overtones of the illicit strong enough to arouse his interest. She had discovered, so she said, that the old owner of the Aztec, Joe Parlier, had owned bonds which he considered valueless. Actually they were worth a great deal, and were supposed to be somewhere among his effects. She wanted an opportunity to look for them.

Gem's pleasure was disturbed by the thoupht that Jean's presence was not the direct result of his appearance and personality. Half-sullenly he jerked the Moon-chaser down toward a high mountain-top spangled with blue, green and red lights.

"Skylark Haven," he said. "Pretty nice place—for Codiron, that is. The live ones come here from all over the planet."

Skylark Haven indeed appeared gay and popular. A hexagonal pylon reared fifty feet into the air, shimmering with waves of color, a representation of the sound-hVht crystals by which Codiron was known. The shiftinp colors reflected garishly from the hulls, domes and canopies of air-boats parked beside the building.

Gem seized Jean's arm, strode across the outside terrace, holding his aquiline profile pridefully out-thrust. Jean trotted along beside, half-amused, half-exasperated.

They entered the building through an arch in a great wall of bear-funeus, smelling pleasandy pungent. A man in black ushered them into a little circular booth with a flourish. As they seated themselves the booth moved slowly off, circling and twisting with silken smoothness on a long eccentric circuit of the room.

A waitress in translucent black slid up on power-skates. "Old-fashioned," said Gem. "Lemon fizz," said Jean.

Gem raised his eyebrows. "GadI Take a drinkl That's what you're here fori"

"I don't like to drink." "Pahl" said Gem scornfully.

Jean shrugged. Plainly Gem considered her something of a blue-stocking ... If she liked him better, it would have been fun letting him discover otherwise. But he was not only arrogant, he was callow to boot.

An attendant came offering power-skates for rent. Gem looked at Jean challengingly. She shook her head. "I'm too clumsy. I fall all over myself."

"It's easy," said Gem. "Look at those two—" he pointed to a couple dancing with easy effortless sweeps and circles. "You'll catch on. It's easy. Just turn your toe where you want to go, press a little and you're there. The harder you press, the faster you move. To stop, you press on your heel."

Jean shook her head. "I'd rather just sit here and talk." "About those bonds?"

She nodded. "If you help me, 111 cut you in for a third.'* He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes. Jean realized that

he was considering the feasibility of three thirds rather than

one.

"Joe Parlier loaded up on lots of junk," said Jean carelessly. "Some of the bonds were stolen, and whoever presented them would have a lot of explaining to do. I' know which are valuable and safe."

"Mmmph." Gem drank his Old-fashioned.

Jean said, "I don't know who owns the Aztec now; for all I know all Joe's things might have been burnt up."

"I can set you right there," said Gem thoughtfully. "The attic's full of old junk, and Godfrey says it's all left over Parlier. He's been going to clean it out but never gets around to it."

Jean drank her lemon fizz to hide her excitement. "What time does the place open?"

"Ten o'clock. I open up. I'm the day man."

"Tomorrow," said Jean, "111 be there at nine."

"Well be there together," said Gem. He leaned forward, took her hands meaningfully. "You're too pretty to be let out of my sight for—"

There was a skirl and scrape of skates. A harsh voice cried, "You get your hands off my girl!" And a tough round face glared into the booth. Jean noticed a mop of black curls, a wide stock frame.

Gem stared an instant, overcome by surprise and rage. He jumped to his feet, "Don't you tell me what to do, you—"

The black-haired youth had turned to Jean with a bitter expression. "As far as I'm concerned, Jade, you can go to hell."

He turned, stalked off.

Gem sat still as a statue. Jean saw a curious change come over his features. He had forgotten her completely, he was looking after the black-haired youth. His mouth broke into a humorless grin, but his eyelids, rather than drooping, lifted up, and his eyes took on a vitreous glaze. Slowly he rose to his feet.

Jean said in a matter-of-fact voice, "Don't be a child. Sit down and behave yourself."

He paid her no heed. Jean drew back a little. Gem was dangerous. "Sit down," she said sharply.

Gem's grin became a grimace. He vaulted the railing of the booth, quiedy, stealthily, went after the black-haired youth.

Jean sat impatiendy, tipping her glass back and forth across the table. Let them fight . . . Young bulls, young boars . . . She hoped the black-haired boy would wipe up the ground with Gem. Of course he had originally started the trouble. What did he mean, calling her Jade? She'd never seen him before. Could the ubiquitous Martha Cholwell be blamed? She seemed to precede Jean everywhere. Jean glanced around the floor with new interest.

Fifteen minutes passed before Gem returned to the table. The madness had left his face. He was bruised, tom and dirty, but clearly he had been the victor. Jean saw it in his swagger, in the tilt of his handsome dark brown head . . . Foolish young animal, thought Jean, without emotion.

He swung his legs back into the booth, rather stiffly, Jean noted. "Fixed that guy for a while," he said in a pleasant voice. Jean's vocabulary was not particularly extensive, and the word "catharsis" was not familiar to her. She thought to herself, "He's taken out his meanness on that black-haired boy and he feels better. He'll probably be halfway decent for a while."

And indeed Gem was quiet and almost self-effacing the remainder of the evening. At midnight he suggested leaving.

Jean made no protest. There had been no further sign of the black-haired youth or of anyone she could identify as Cholwell's niece.

In the air-boat he pulled her to him and kissed her passionately. Jean resisted a moment, then relaxed. Why not? she thought. It was easier than fighting him off. Though in a way she hated contributing further to his self-esteem.

VII

Sunrise on Codiron was accompanied by a phenomenon unique in the entire universe: a curtain of blue-white light dropping down the western sky line like an eyelid. It was as if a plug under the horizon had been pulled to let the darkness gush swiftly away, leaving behind the ice-color of Codiron day. The effect was ascribed to a fluorescent component of the air which became activated by Mintaka Sub-30's actinic light, and the sharp line of separation was explained by reference to the minute size of Mintaka Sub-30's disk—nearly a point source of fight.

Jean slipped quiedy from her room in time to witness the occurrence. Main Street was long and empty, steeped in blue gloom. Wind swept up the street, cut into her face. She licked her hps hungrily, and wondered where breakfast could be found. At one time a slatternly coffee-house down Paradise Alley served late-hour drunks, gamblers and surfeited patrons of the town's two brothels; perhaps the place was still in operation.

Jean shivered in the wind sweeping down from Codiron's desolate rocks, pulled the dark blue jacket close around her neck. Under her clothes she felt sticky, but so early there was not hot water for a bath—one of the petty economies by which the Soone House had achieved flashy trim for the street front. Superficial glitter, inner deficiency, like certain human beings, and the picture of Gem Morales came to her mind. Her mouth curled in a wintry smile. Arrogant opinionated creature. He had swaggered away from Soone House very satisfied with himself . . . She dismissed him from her mind. He was an atom in a vast universe; let him enjoy himself, so long as he forwarded her own goals.

She shivered. It was really very cold and very early to be undertaking such a business. The attic would reek of damp tobacco smoke, beer and whiskey fumes. Accumulated dirt and dust would be clammy under her fingers, but she could not expect her quest to be a round of pleasure. And it would be less complex to sort out Joe Parlier's old belongings before Gem Morales arrived on the scene.

She made the familiar turn past the courthouse into Paradise Alley, and saw ahead the yellow glow of the New York Cafe. She slipped in, took a seat at the counter next to a wheezing farm laborer still stupid from his revelry of the previous night. Quiedy she drank coffee and ate toast, watching herself in the mirror behind the counter—a very pretty girl with heavy black hair cut short, a skin like a pane of ivory with golden light behind, a wide pale-rose mouth in a delicate jaw structure, black eyes that might be wide with excitement or long and narrow and veiled with heavy lashes ... Ill be pretty a long time, thought Jean, if I don't let myself go stale. It's the look of vitality—aliveness —that does so much for me. I hope it's not just because I'm seventeen: adolescent, so to speak. It's more than that.

She finished her coffee, slipped back into Paradise Alley. Behind her, blue-white morning light shone down Main Street; comers and protuberances caught the glow and shone as with St. Elmo's Fire.

Ahead, dingy and dark, rose the front of Joe Parlier's old Aztec Tavern, the earliest home of her memory.

She slipped around to the back, entered by a well-remembered way. up to the roof of the little storage shed, where a yank at a panel of apparentiy solid louvres provided an opening. Then through, writhing and panting, to land breathless and scraped on a narrow stairs to the garret.

She listened. No sound.

Without hesitation she ran up the stairs, pulled open the dingy frame door.

She paused in the doorway, and memories flooded up to choke her throat and fill her with pity for the dark-eyed little wretch that had once slept here.

She blinked, and then set emotion to one side. She looked around the garret. Light seeped through the dirty window to show her a pile of dusty boxes, all that remained of leering Joe Parlier.

As she had feared it was dusty, damp and clammy, and smelled of the bar below.

In the first box she found bills, receipts, cancelled checks. The second held a photograph album, which she laid aside, and a number of sound tapes. The third box contained—she raised her head alertly. A stealthy creak in the floor. Jean, sighed, turned her head.

Gem Morales stood looking through the door. He was half-smiling, hps drawn back over his teeth—a thoroughly unpleasant expression.

"Thought I'd find you here," he said sofdy.

"I thought I'd find you here," said Jean.

He took a step into the room. "You thieving little—"

Jean saw that his expression was passing through the sequence of the night before. She tensed herself. In another minute , . .

She said, "Gem."

"Yes?"

"Are you afraid to die?"

He made no answer, but stood watching like a cat. She said, "If you're not very careful—you're going to die."

He stepped forward easily. "Don't come any closer."

His body loomed above her; he bent slighdy, reaching forward.

"Two more steps, Gem . . ."

She showed him what she held in her hand, a little metal box no larger than a match-case. From a tiny hole in its side a sliver of a dart would plunge six inches into a human body, and the little thread of mitrox would explode.

Gem stopped short. "You wouldn't dare. You wouldn't dare to kill me I" His mental powers were insufficient to envision a universe without Gem Morales. With a supple motion of his shoulders he lunged forward.

The dart whispered across the air, ruffled his shirt front. She heard the internal thump saw the outward heave of his chest, felt the quiver in the floor when his body struck.

She grimaced, slowly tucked the dart-box back in her sleeve. She turned back to the boxes. Perhaps she should not have led Gem on with the tale of hidden wealth; it wasn't really fair to dangle temptation before one so vain and so weak.

She sighed, opened the third box. It contained calendars, as did the fourth. Joe Parlier had saved calendars, marking off day after day with red crayon and each year laying the record of used-up time to rest. Jean had seen him scribble in the spaces; possibly it had been memoranda. At the time she had been unable to read.

She leafed back seventeen years, searched along the chain of days. January, February, March—a scribble in faded black ink caught her eye: "Tell Mollie, for the last time, to call for her damned brat."

Mollie.

Mollie was her mother's name. And who was Mollie? Joe's mistress? Was it possible that Joe himself had been her father?

She considered, decided in the negative. Too many times Joe had vilified the fate that made him her keeper. And she remembered when Joe had the horrors after a terrible bellowing drunk. She had dropped a pan to the floor; the clang had jangled the discordant skein of his nerves.

Joe had cried out in a voice like a comet; he cursed her presence, her eyes, her teeth, the very air she breathed. He told her in a reckless wild voice that he'd as soon kill her as look at her, that he only kept her until she grew old enough to sell. It settled the question. If she had been a part of him, he would have coddled her, given her his best; she would have been a vicarious new start in life for him.

Joe was not her father.

But who was Mollie?

She picked up the photograph album—froze to silence. Footsteps in the street outside. They stopped. She heard the outside door rattle, a voice call out something she could not understand. There was a ratde, then footsteps dying away. Then there was silence.

Jean seated herself on a box and opened the album.

vni

The first pictures dated from Joe Parlier's childhood. There were a dozen shots of a stilt-house on Venus, evidendy along the Brandy Coast. A sallow little boy in tattered pink shorts that she recognized as Joe stood beside a buxom hard-faced woman. A few pages later Joe had become a young man, posing beside an old Duraflite air-wagon. Behind were sagging brown and white tassel-trees; the locale was still Venus. On the next page was a single picture, a pretty girl with rather an empty expression. Scrawled in green ink were the words, "Too bad, Joe."

The scene changed to Earth: there were pictures of a bar, a restaurant, a large tableau with Joe placid and pompous among a dozen men and women, apparendy his employees.

There were only a few more pictures in the album; evidently Joe's enthusiasm for pictures declined with his fortunes. Of these two were professional photographs of a brass-blond woman, apparendy an entertainer, smiling hugely. The inscription read, "To a Good Guy, Wirlie."

There was one more photograph. It showed the Aztec Tavern of twenty years before, so Jean judged by Joe's appearance. He stood in the doorway flanked on one side by two bartenders in short sleeves, a porter, a man Jean recognized as a gambler; on the other side by four bold-looking women in provocative poses. The regend read: "Joe and the Gang." Under each figure was a name: "Wirlie, May, Tata, Mollie, Joe, Steve, Butch, Carl, Hopham."

Mollie! With a dry mouth Jean scrutinized the face. Her mother? A big beefy woman with a truculent look. Her features were small, kneaded, doughy: a face like a jar full of pig's-feet.

Mollie. Mollie what? If her profession were what it seemed, the chance that she still lived in the neighborhood was small.

.Jean petulandy went back to the calendar, turned back the months. . . . Two years before the date of her birth she found a notation, "Collect bail refund on Mollie and May."

There was nothing more. Jean sat a moment pondering. If this revolting Mollie were her mother, who might her father be? Jean sniffed. It was doubtful if Mollie herself knew.

With a conscious effort Jean returned to the lard-colored face, the litde pig eyes. It hurt. So this is Mother. Her eyes suddenly flooded with tears, her mouth twitched. She went on looking, as if it were some land of penance. What in her arrogance had she expected? A Pontemma baronet and his lady, living in a white marble castie? ... "I wish I hadn't been so nosy," said Jean mournfully. She sighed. "Maybe I have a distinguished father."

The idea amused her. "He must have been very, very drunk."

She detached the photograph, tucked it in her pocket, rose uncertainly to her feet. Time to go.

She repacked the boxes, stood looking indecisively at Gem's body. It wasn't nice leaving him here in the garret . . . Nothing about Gem was very nice. He might lay here weeks, months. She felt a small queasiness in her stomach which she repressed angrily. "Be sensible, you fool."

Better wipe up fingerprints. . . . There was a rattle, a pounding at the front door, a hoarse voice called, "Gem I .. . Gem!"

Jean ran to the door. Time to go. Someone must have seen Gem enter.

She slipped down the stairs, wiggled.out the louvre opening to the shed roof, carefully pushed the louvres home. She slid to the ground, ducked over a sagging fence into Aloha Place.

Ten minutes later she was back in her room at the Soone House, throwing off her clothes for a shower.

The sleek and lazy clerk m the courthouse grumbled when Jean modesdy approached him with her request.

"Oh, please," said Jean, smiling half-sidelong, an old ruse.

It invested her with wistful appeal, magic daring, an unthinkable unimaginable proffer.

The clerk licked his wine-colored old lips. "Oh . . . Very well. Little girl like you should be home with your mother. Well?" he asked sharply. "What are you laughing at?"

Jean did not think it wise to mention that her mother was the topic of her inquiry.

Together they pored over the records, sliding tape after tape through the screen.

"That year we was busy as bees," grumbled the clerk. "But we ought to find that name if—well, now, here's a Mollie. Mollie Salomon. That the one? Arrested for vagrancy and narcotic addiction on January 12, remanded to the Rehabilitation Home February 1. Bail posted by Joe Parlier, man used to run the saloon down Paradise Alley."

"That's her," said Jean excitedly. "When was she discharged?"

The clerk shook his head. "We wouldn't have no record of that. Must have been when her addiction was cleared up, a year or two."

Jean calculated, chewing her lip with little sharp teeth, frowning. That would put Mollie back in circulation something before the date of her own birthday.

The clerk watched like an old gray cat, but made no comment.

Jean asked hesitandy, "I don't suppose this—Mollie Salomon lives around here now?"

The clerk showed signs of uneasiness, twitching a decorative tassel on his lapel. "Well, young lady, it's hardly the kind of place you'd be apt to care about. ..."

"What's the address?"

The clerk raised his head, met her glance. Quietly he said, "It's out on Meridian Road, past El Panatela. The Ten-mile House."

Meridian Road led into the uplands, winding around the three volcanic necks which ruled the Angel City skyline, dipping like a humming-bird into each of the old mines, fining out into Plaghank Valley. Ten miles along the road was six miles by air, and in minutes after rising from Soone

House, the cab set Jean down by a ramshackle old building.

Wherever men worked and produced and made money in hard and hostile back-country, Ten-Mile Houses appeared. When towns were built, when civilization brought comfort and moderation, the Ten-Mile Houses became quiet backwaters, drowsing through the years in a mellow amber gloom. The rooms became dusty and footfalls sounded loud where once only silence would have been noticed.

When Jean marched briskly up¹ the stone-foam steps the downstairs sajoon was empty. The bar extended along the back wall with the mirror behind overhung with a hundred souvenirs of the old days: choice sound-light crystals, fossils of Trotters and other extinct Codiron life-forms, drills, a tableau of six miner's hats, each painted with a name.

A voice rasped suspiciously, "What you want, girl?"

She turned, saw a hawk-nosed old man sitting in a corner. His eyes were blue and sharp; with his ruff of white hair he reminded her of an old white parakeet disturbed from its sleep.

"I'm looking for Mollie," said Jean. "Mollie Salomon." "Nobody here by that name; what do you want her for?" "I want to talk." -

The old man's jaws moved up and down as if he were chewing something very hot. "What about?"

"If she wants you to know—shell tell you herself."

The old man's chin wrinkled. "Pretty pert, ain't you?"

Soft footsteps sounded behind Jean; a woman in a drab evening gown entered the room, stood looking at Jean with an obvious expression of hunger and envy.

The old man barked, "Where's Mollie?*

The woman pointed at Jean. "Is she coming to work? Because I won't put up with it. Ill make trouble; the minute a young tart like that sets her—"

"I just want to talk to Mollie."

"She's upstairs . . . Cleaning the carpet." She turned to the old man. "Paisley did it again. If you'd keep that old drunk outa here, I'd thank you kindly for it"

"Money is money."

Gingerly Jean started to climb the stairs, but a large female figure blocked the passage.

She was carrying a bucket and a brush. As she came into the light, Jean recognized the woman in Joe Parlier's photograph, modified by twenty years of ill health, bad temper, a hundred pounds of sour flesh.

"Mollie?" ventured Jean. "Are you Mollie Salomon?"

"That's me. What about it?"

"I'd like to talk to you. In private."

Mollie looked her over briefly, darted a bitter glance into the saloon where the old man and the woman sat listening with undisguised interest. "All right, come on out here."

She pushed open a rickety door, waddled out on a side porch overlooking a sad little garden of rattle-bush, pilgrim vine, rusty fungus. She sank into a wicker chair that squeaked under her weight.

"What's the story?"

Jean's imaginings had never quite envisioned a meeting like this. What was there to say? Looking into the pudgy white face, conscious of her sour woman-reek, the words came haltingly to her mouth . . . Sudden anger flared inside Jean.

"Seventeen years ago you left a baby with Joe Parlier in Angel City. I want to know who the father was."

Mollie Salomon's face changed by not a twitch. After a moment she said in a low harsh voice, "I've often wondered how that baby turned out. . . ."

Jean asked in sudden hope, "It wasn't your own baby?"

Mollie laughed bitterly. "Don't run away with yourself. It was my brat, no doubt of that, no doubt at all . . . How did you find out?"

"Joe left a kind of diary . . . Who was the father? Was it Joe?"

The woman drew herself up into a ludicrous exposition of dignity. "Joe Parlier? Humph, I should say not." "Who then?"

Mollie inspected Jean through crafty eyes. "You look like you're doing well in the world."

Jean nodded. "I knew it would come to this. How much?"

Mollie's price was surprisingly modest—perhaps the gauge of importance she put on the matter. "On ten, twenty dollars, just to pay for my time."

Jean would have given her a hundred, a thousand. "Here."

"Thank you," said Mollie Salomon with prim gentility. "Now I'll tell you what I know of the affair, which to my way of thinking is one of the queerest things I've ever heard of."

Jean said impatientiy, "Never mind that, who is my father?"

Mollie said, "Nobody."

^Nobodyr

"Nobody."

Jean was silent a moment. Then: "There must have been someone."

Mollie said with dignity. "There's no one that should know better than me, and 111 tell you that for sure."

"Maybe you were drunk?^ suggested Jean hopefully.

Mollie inspected her critically. "Pretty wise for a little snip your age . . . Ah, well, dreary me, I wasn't far behind you, and I was more'n cute . . . Look at me now, you'd never guess it, me that's been doin' slops at Ten-Mile House for over twelve years...."

"Who is my father?"

"Nobody."

"That's impossible!"

Mollie shook her head. "That's the way it happened. And how do I know? Because I was out in the Rehabilitation Home, and I'd been out there two years. Then I look down one day, I say, 'Mollie, you're getting big.' And then I say, 'Must be gas.' And the next day I say, 'Mollie, if it wasn't that this damn jail is run like a goldfish tank, with eyes on you every last minute, and you know for a fact that you haven't seen a man except old Cholwell and the Director—'"

"Cholwell!"

"Old Doc Cholwell was the medic, a cold fish. . . . Lord on high, what a cold fish. Anyway I said to myself—"

"It couldn't be that Cholwell got to you?"

Mollie snorted. "Old Cholwell? More likely pin it on Archangel Gabriel. That old—" she broke into obscene muttering. "To this day I'd like to catch that cod-faced sissy-panty, him that wouldn't let me go when my time was up! Claimed I had disease, said I had to wait it out! Nothing doing. I made my own way out. I rode the truck in, and not a thing was there to do about it, because my time was up, and I was detained out of legal order. And then— I go to the doctor, old Doc Walsh, and he says, 'Millie, the only trouble with you is that you're just pregnant as hell.' And the next thing you know, there's the brat, and me without a crust or cooky, and needing my freedom, so I just carry her out to my good friend Joe, and a rare fuss he made too. .. ."

"How about the Director?"

"What about him?"

"Could he have—"

Mollie snorted incredulously. "Not old Fussy Richard. He never even showed his face around. Besides he was fooling around some young snip in the office."

There was the sound of humming airfoils. Jean jumped to the ground, craned her neck at the departing air-boat. "Now what in Heaven's name. ... I told him to wait. How will I get back to Angel City?"

"Well, well," said a reedy precise voice from within the saloon. "Well, well, this is indeed a quaint old relic."

Mollie Salomon heaved herself to her feet. "That voice!" Her face was tinged with an unhealthy pink. "That voice, I'd never miss it, it's old Cholwell."

Jean followed her into the saloon.

"Now, you pickle-faced little freak, what brings you out here? Do you know that I've swore long and time again that if ever I caught you off your nasty Home, I'd pour slops on you, and do you know that's just what I'm going to do . . . Just wait for my bucket. . . ." Mollie turned and panted away down the corridor.

Jean said, "Did you send my cab away, Mr. Cholwell?"

Cholwell bowed. "Yes, Miss Parlier. I've been wanting to show you my chicken ranch, and I thought that today you might accept my invitation.''

"And suppose I didn't, then how do I get back to Angel City?"

Cholwell made an elegant gesture. "Naturally I will take you anywhere you wish to go."

"And suppose I don't want to ride with you?"

Cholwell looked pained. "In that case, of course, I'm guilty of a grave imposition, and can only offer you my apologies."

Mollie Salomon came running into the room with a bucket, puffing and sobbing with anger. Cholwell backed out into the open with considerable agility, sacrificing none of his dignity.

Mollie ran out on the porch. Cholwell retreated further across the yard. Mollie chased him a few steps, then dashed the contents of the bucket in his direction. Cholwell dodged clear of the mess by twenty feet. Mollie shook her fist. "And don't set foot in Ten-Mile again, or there'll be worse for you, far worse, you nasty little swine." And she added further scurrility.

A squat dough-faced woman scuttling after fastidous Cholwell with a bucketful of slops was too much for Jean. She broke into delighted laughter. At the same time her eyes smarted with tears. Her father and her mother. In spite of Mollie's angry protests Cholwell owned to a daughter who resembled her, Martha, Sunny, Jade, whatever her name.

With not a glance for Jean, Mollie disappeared triumph-antiy into the saloon. Cholwell approached, mopping his forehead angrily. "For two cents I'd put a charge against her, and have her committed.. .."

"Are you my father, Mr. Cholwell?" asked Jean.

Cholwell turned a bright searching glance upon her. "Why-ever do you ask that, Miss Parlier? It's a very curious ques-. tion."

"Mollie is my mother. She says she became pregnant while you were the only man nearby."

Cholwell shook his head decidedly. "No, Miss Parlier.

Morality to one side, I assure you that I am still a man of fastidious taste and discernment."

Jean admitted to herself that a passionate combination of Cholwell and Mollie was hard to conceive. "Who, then, is my father?"

Cholwell raised his eyebrows as if in apprehension of a painful duty he felt called on to perform. "It appears that —excuse me, I will be blunt; I feel that, young as you are, you are a realist—it appears that your mother's relations with men were such as to make responsibility indefinite."

"But she was at the Rehabilitation Home; she says she never saw any other man but you."

Cholwell shook his head doubtfully. "Perhaps you'd like to visit the old Home? It's almost adjacent to my own—"

Jean snapped, "Once and for all, I'm not interested in your damn chickens. I want to go back to Angel City."

Cholwell bowed his head in defeat. "Angel City it is, and I apologize for my presumption."

Jean said shortly, "Where's your boat?"

"This way, around the bear-pad." He led around the white slab of fungus.

The air-boat was old and stately. The words Codiron Rehabilitation Home had been painted over, but the out-fines were still legible.

Cholwell slid back the door. Jean hesitated, glanced thoughtfully back toward the Ten-Mile House

"Something you've forgotten?" asked Cholwell courteously.

"No ... I guess not."

Cholwell waited patientiy. Jean said angrily, "It's just this, Mr. Cholwell. I'm young and there's a lot I don't know, but—"

"Yes?"

"I've got an awful quick temper. So—let's get started. To Angel City."

"To Angel City," said Cholwell thoughtfully.

Jean jumped into the boat. Cholwell closed the door, circled the boat; then, as if struck by a, sudden notion, slid back the access panel to the motor box.

Jean watched warily. He seemed to be making a minor adjustment.

The air was bad inside the cab, smelling of varnish and stale ozone. She heard the ventilation system turn on: evi-dentiy the object of Cholwell's ministrations. The air became cool and fresh. Very fresh. Smelling of pine needles and hay. Jean breathed deeply. Her nose and lungs tingled. . . . She frowned. Odd. She decided to—but Cholwell had finished, was coming around the side of the boat. He approached the door, looked in.

Jean could see his face only from the comer of her eye. She was not certain of his expression. She fancied that he nodded, smiled.

He did not immediately climb into the boat, but stood looking off across the valley toward the three volcanic necks, black stumps on the dingy sky.

The smell of pine needles and hay permeated Jean's head, her body. She was faintly indignant. . . . Cholwell at last opened the door, held it wide. The wind up Plag-hank Valley swept through the boat, bringing in the familiar efflorescence of dust and hot rock.

Cholwell cautiously tested the air, finally climbed in, closed the door. The air-boat quivered; Ten-Mile House became a dilapidated miniature below. They flew north. Angel City was to the south.

Jean remonstrated, in the form of heavy breathing. Cholwell smiled complacendy. "In the old days we sometimes transported obstreperous patients; very troublesome until we installed the pacifier tank and connected it to the air ducts."

Jean breathed hard.

Cholwell said indulgentiy, "In two hours you'll be as good as new." He began humming a song, an old-fashioned sentimental ballad.

They rode over a ridge, swung in blustering wind currents, settled into a valley. A great black escarpment rose opposite. Bright blue sunlight shone alone the face, reflecting from vertical ridges as if they were frin-es of foil.

The boat shuddered and vibrated alone the valley lower than the great black cliff. Presently a cluster of pink buildings appeared, nestled against the rock.

"Can you see our destination, there ahead?" Cholwell asked solicitously. "It will be your home for a little while— but don't let me alarm you. There will be compensations." He hummed quietiy for a moment. "And your money will be put to a good cause." He darted a glance into her face. "You are skeptical? You dislike the idea? But, I insist, there will be compensations, for you become one of my—little chickens." The idea amused him. "One of my little flock. . . . But I will be discreet; I don't wish to alarm you. . . ."

The boat settled toward the sprawling cluster of pink buildings. "One of the old Trotter sites," said Cholwell in a reverent voice. "Ancient past human imagination, and a perfect sun-trap. You see, I told you no more than the truth. I must confess that the plant is neglected, sadly neglected, these days, with only myself and a small staff to tend the flock. . . . Now that we are to be affluent, perhaps we will make some changes." He scanned the group of buildings with flared nostrils. "Hideous. The worst of the century, the Rococo Revival. And pink stucco over the sound old stone-foam . . . But money can mend where wishing and hoping fails." He clicked his tongue. "Perhaps we will move to one of the tropical planets; this Codiron land is bleak and stem, and the blackwater frost begins to worry my old bones." He laughed. "I ramble on ... If I become a bore, you must interrupt. . . And here we are. Home."

Bright pink walls rose up past Jean's vision. She felt a jar.

The door opened; she glimpsed Cholwell's face and the grinning yellow countenance of a spare muscular woman.

Hands helped her to the ground, hands went over her person. Her dart-box, her coiled glass-knife were taken from her; she heard Cholwell clucking in satisfaction.

Hands half-led, half-carried her into the gloom of a building.

They traversed an echoing hall lit through a row of high narrow panes. Cholwell stopped beside a heavy door, turned and his face came into the range of Jean's vision.

"When my little flock becomes restless, they must be penned securely . . . But trust wins trust, and—" his voice was lost in the rattle of the door-skids.

Jean moved forward. Face after face appeared in the channel of her vision. Startled face after startled face. As if she were looking" in a succession of mirrors. Her own face looking back at her, again and again.

She felt softness beneath her, and now saw nothing but the ceiling. She heard Cholwell's voice. "This is your long-lost sister, returned to us at last. I think there'll be good news for us all shortly."

Something hot and very painful touched her wrist. She lay looking at the ceiling, breathing hard. The pain presently subsided to an ache.

Her eyelids sank shut.

Jean studied the girls covertly under her eyelids. There were six of them—slender dark-haired girls with impatient intelligent faces. They wore their hair longer than hers, and perhaps they were softer and prettier to a trifling degree. But essentially they were her. Not merely like her. They were her.

They wore a costume like a uniform—white knee-length breeches, a loose yellow blouse, black coolie sandals. Their faces suggested that they were bored and sullen, if not angry.

Jean sat up on the couch, yawned, yawned, yawned, as if she would never get enough. Her perceptions sharpened; memory returned to her.

The girls were sitting in a half-hostile circle. To understand them, Jean told herself, just put myself in their places.

"Well," said Jean, "don't just sit there."

The girls moved a trifle, each shifting her position as if by a common impulse.

"My name is Jean." She rose to her feet, stretched, smoothed back her hair. She looked around the room. A dormitory in the old Rehabilitation Home. "A hell of a rat's nest. I wonder if old Cholwell's listening?" "Listening?"

"Does he have the place wired for sound? Can he—" she noted the lack of comprehension. "Wait 111 take a look. Sometimes the mikes are easy to spot, sometimes not."

The pick-up button would be close to the door or close to the window, to allow the entry of wires. A radio pickup would be conspicuous in this barren room.

She found the button where she expected to find it, over the door, with hair wires leading through the crack. She snapped it loose, displayed it to the other girls. "There. Old Cholwell could hear every word we said."

One of the girls took the thing gingerly. "So that's how he always finds out what's going on . . . How did you know it was here?"

Jean shrugged. "They're common enough . . . How come we're all locked up? Are we prisoners?"

"I don't know about you. We're being punished. When Cholwell went away to Earth, some of us rode the supply boat into Angel City . . . We don't get the chance very often. Cholwell was furious. He says we'll spoil everything.""

"What's everything?"

She made a vague gesture. "In a little while we'll all be rich, according to Cholwell. Well live in a fine house, we can do anything we want. First, he's got to get the money. It's been like that ever since I can remember."

"Cherry's gone after the money," said another girl.

Jean blinked. "There's another?"

"There were seven of us. You make eieht Cherry left this morning for Angel City. She's supposed to get money; I think she's taking the next packet to Earth."

"Oh," said Jean. Was it possible . . . Could it be . . . She thought she saw the scope of Cholwell's plan. She said, "Let me see your hand."

The girl held out her hand indifferently. Jean compared it with her own, squinted closely. "Look, it's the same."

"Of course it's the same."

"Why of course?"

The girl inspected Jean with a puzzled half-contemptuous expression. "Don't you know?"

Jean shook her head. "I never knew till—well, there were rumors and talk around Angel City—but until I saw you I thought I was the only one of me there was. All of a sudden there's six others."

"Seven others."

"Seven others. I'm really—well, astonished. Thunderstruck. But it hasn't sunk in yet."

"Cholwell says we should be grateful to him. But—none of us like him. He won't let us do anything."

Jean looked around the six faces. They lacked some quality which she had. Fire? Willfulness? Jean tried to fathom the difference between herself and the others. They seemed as bright and as willful as she was herself. But they had not acquired the habit of thinking for themselves. There were too many of them subjected to the same stimuli, thinking the same thoughts. There was no leadership among them. She asked, "Aren't you curious about me? You don't seem to care one way or the other."

"Oh." The girl shrugged. "It'll all come out."

"Yes," said Jean. "No doubt... I don't like it here."

"We don't either."

"Why don't you leave? Run away?"

All the girls laughed. "Run where? Across two hundred miles of mountains and rock? And afterward, then what? We've no money to get away from Codiron."

Jean sniffed contemptuously. "A good looking girl can always get money."

They looked genuinely interested. "How?"

"Oh—there's ways. I guess you've never travelled very much."

"No. We see a few films and watch the television and read books."

"Cholwell picks out all the books?" "Yes."

The old Svengali____ "

"Who's he?"

"Somebody like Cholwell, only just about—no, exactly, one eighth as ambitious . . . How did it all start?"

The girl nearest her shrugged.. Where the blouse had slipped back on her wrist there was a tattoo mark. Jean leaned forward, read, "Felice." Aroused by a sudden memory she looked at her own wrist. Tattooed into the ivory skin was "Jean."

Now she was really angry. "Tagging us like cattle!"

None of the others shared her indignation. "He says he has to tell us apart."

"Damned old scoundrel ... In some way, somehow . . ." Her voice trailed away. Then: "How is it that we're all the same?"

Felice was watching her with bright calculating eyes. "You'll have to ask Cholwell. He's never told us."

"But your mothers? Who are your mothers?"

Felice wrinkled her nose. "Let's not talk of nasriness."~

The girl next to her said with a trace of malice, "You saw old Svenska, the woman that helped you in? That's Felice's mother."

"Ooohl" said Felice. "I told you never to remind me! And don't forget your own mother, the woman that died with only half a face. ..."

Jean gritted her teeth, walked up and down the room. "I want to get out of this damn jail . . . I've been in jails and homes and camps and orphan asylums before; I've always got out. Somehow." She looked -suspiciously around the six faces. "Maybe you're all stringing in with Cholwell. I'm not."

"We're not either. But there's nothing we can do."

"Have you ever thought of killing him?" Jean asked sarcastically. "That's easy enough. Stick him once with a good knife, and hell change his mind the next time he wants to lock people up ... Ill stick him if I get a chance.. .."

There was silence around the room.

Jean continued, "Do you know whose money Cherry is going after? No? Well, it's mine. I've got lots of it. And as soon as Cholwell knew it, he began scheming how to get it. Now he thinks hell send Cherry to my trustee. He's told her what to do, how to pry at Mycroft. Mycroft won't know the difference. Because she's not only like me. She is me. Even our fingerprints, our handprints.'' "Of course."

Jean cried out angrily, "The trouble with you is that you've never had to work or fight; you've sat around like pets. Chickens, Cholwell calls you. And now all your guts are gone. You put up with this—this. . . ." Words failed her. She made a furious gesture around the room.

"You don't fight. You let him treat you like babies. Somehow he got us away from our mothers, somehow he treated us, molded us so that we're all the same, somehow—"

A dry cutting voice said, "Very interesting, Jean . . . May I have a few minutes with you please?"

There was a rusde of movement, apprehension. Cholwell stood in the doorway. Jean glared over her shoulder, marched out into the corridor.

Cholwell conducted her with grave courtesy to a cheerful room furnished as an office, taking a seat behind a modem electric desk. Jean remained standing, watching him defiant-

ly.

Cholwell picked up a pencil, held it suspended between two fingers. He chose his words carefully.

"It becomes clear that you constitute a special problem."

Jean stamped her feet. "I don't care about your problems, I want to get back to Angel City. If you think you can keep me here very long, you're crazy I"

Cholwell inspected the pencil with every evidence of interest. "It's a very peculiar situation, Jean. Let me explain it, and you'll see the need for cooperation. If we all work together—you, me and the other girls—we can all be rich and independent."

"I'm rich already. And I'm independent already."

Cholwell smiled gently. "But you don't want to share your wealth with your sisters?^

"I don't want to share my wealth with old Polton, with you, with the cab driver, with the captain of the Bucyrus . . . Why should I want to share it with them?" She shook her head furiously. "No, sir, I want to get out of here, right now. And you'd better see to it, or you'll run into so dam much trouble—"

"In regard to money," said. Cholwell smoothly, "out here we share and share alike."

Jean sneered. "You had it figured out from the first time you saw me in Mr. Mycroft's office. You thought you'd get me out here and send in one of your girls to collect. But you've got Mr. Mycroft wrong. He won't be hurried or rushed. Your girl Cherry won't get very much from him."

"Shell get enough. If nothing else well have the income on two million dollars. Somewhere around fifty thousand dollars a year. What more do we want?"

Jean's eyes were flooding with tears of anger. "Why do you risk keeping me alive? Sooner or later 111 get away, 111 get loose, and I won't care who gets hurt. .. ."

"My dear girl," Cholwell chided gendy. "You're overwrought. And there's so much of the background that you're not aware of; it's like the part of an ice-berg that's below the water. Let me tell you a little story. Sit down, my dear, sit down."

"Don't 'my dear' me, you old—"

"Tut, tut." He put away his pencil, leaned back. "Twenty years ago I was Resident Physician here at the Rehabilitation Home. Then of course it was still in full operation." He looked at her sharply. "All of this must remain confidential, do you understand?"

Jean started to laugh wildly, then a remark of monumental sarcasm came to her tongue. But she restrained herself. If old Cholwell were so eaten up with vanity, if the need for an intelligent ear were so extreme that he must use her, so much the better.

She made a non-committal sound. Cholwell watched her with veiled eyes, chuckled as if he were following the precise chain of her thoughts.

"No matter, no matter," said Cholwell. "But you must never forget that you owe me a great deal. Humanity owes me a great deal." He sat cherishing the thought, rolling the overtones along his mental palate. "Yes, a great deal. You girls, especially. Seven of you—it might be said—owe me your actual existences. I took one and I made eight."

Jean waited.

"Seventeen years ago," said Cholwell dreamily, "the director of the Home entered into an indiscreet liaison with a young social worker. The next day, fearing scandal if pregnancy developed, the director consulted me, and I agreed to examine the young women. I did so and by a very clever bit of filtration I was able to isolate the fertilized egg. It was an opportunity for which I had been waiting. I nourished the egg. It divided—the first step on its march to a complete human being. Very carefully I separated the two cells. Each of these dividedv again, and aeain I separated the doublets. Once more the cells separated; once more I—"

Jean breathed a deep sigh. "Then Mollie isn't my mother after all. It's almost worth it.. .."

The doctor reproved Jean with a look. "Don't anticipate . . . Where I had a single individual, I had eight. Eight indentities. I let these develop normally, although I suppose I could have continued the process almost indefinitely . . . After a few days, when the cells had become well established, I brought eight healthy women prisoners into the dispensary. I drugged them with a hypnotic, and after priming them with suitable hormones, I planted a zygote in the womb of each."

Cholwell settled comfortably in his chair, laughed. "Eight pregnancies, and never have I seen women so amazed. One of these women, Mollie Salomon, was granted a remission and left the Home before the birth of her child. My child, I suppose I should say. She actually had very little to do with it. By a series of mishaps I lost her and this eighth child." He shook his head regretfully. "It left an unpleasant gap in the experiment—but after all, I had my seven . , . And then, seventeen years later, in Metropolis on Earth, I wander into an office and there—youl I knew that Destiny moved with me."

Jean licked her hps. "If Mollie isn't my real mother—who is?"

Cholwell made a brusque motion. "A matter of no importance. It's best that the direct correspondence be forgotten."

Jean said casually, "What is your goal? You've proved the thing can be done; why do you keep the poor girls hidden out here on Cadiron?"

Cholwell winked roguishly. "The experiment is not quite at an end, my dear."

"No?"

"No. The first phase was brilliantly successful; now we will duplicate the process. And this time I will broadcast my own seed. I want eight great sons. Eight fine Cholwell boys."

Jean said in a small voice, "That's silly.**

Cholwell winked and blinked. "Not at all. It's one of humanities most compelling urges, the desire for offspring."

"People usually work it out differendy . . . And it won't work."

"Won't work? Why on earth not?"

"You don't have access to foster-mothers as you had before. There's no—" She stopped short, almost bit her tongue.

"Obviously, I need search no farther then my own door. Eight healthy young girls, in the springtime flush of life."

"And the mother?"

"Any one of my eight. Dorothy, Jade, Bemice, Felice, Sunny, Cherry, Martha—and Jean. Any one of you."

Jean moved restlessly. "I don't want to be pregnant. Normally or any other way."

Cholwell shook his head indulgently. "It admittedly represents a hardship."

"Well," said Jean. "Whatever you're planning—don't include me. Because I'm not going to do it, I don't care what you say."

Cholwell lowered his head, and a faint pink flush rose in his cheeks. "My dear young woman—" "Don't 'my dear young woman' me."

The telescreen buzzer sounded. Cholwell sighed, touched the button.

Jean's face shone from the screen, frightened and desperate. Behind was an official-looking room, two attentive men in uniform.