First Published: 1949 THE WITCHES OF KARRES by James H. Schmitz 
I. 
 IT WAS AROUND THE HUB OF THE EVENING ON THE PLANET or PORLUMMA that Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres.
 It was just plain fate, so far as he could see.
 He was feeling pretty good as he left a high-priced bar on a cobbly street near the spaceport, with the intention of returning straight to his ship. There hadn't been an argument, exactly. But someone grinned broadly, as usual, when the captain pronounced the name of his native system; and the captain had pointed out then, with considerable wit, how much more ridiculous it was to call a planet Porlumma, for instance, than to call it Nikkeldepain.
 He proceeded to collect a gradually increasing number of pained stares by a detailed comparison of the varied, interesting and occasionally brilliant role Nikkeldepain had played in history with Porlumma's obviously dull and dumpy status as a sixth-rate Empire outpost.
 In conclusion, he admitted frankly that he wouldn't care to be found dead on Porlumma.
 Somebody muttered loudly in Imperial Universum that in that case it might be better if he didn't hang around Porlumma too long. But the captain only smiled politely, paid for his two drinks and left.
 There was no point in getting into a rhubarb on one of these border planets. Their citizens still had an innocent notion that they ought to act like frontiersmen--but then the Law always showed up at once.
 He felt pretty good. Up to the last four months of his young life, he had never looked on himself as being particularly patriotic. But compared to most of the Empire's worlds, Nikkeldepain was downright attractive in its stuffy way. Besides, he was returning there solvent--would they ever be surprised!
 And awaiting him, fondly and eagerly, was Illyla, the Miss Onswud, fair daughter of the mighty Councilor Onswud, and the captain's secretly affianced for almost a year. She alone had believed in him!
 The captain smiled and checked at a dark cross-street to get his bearings on the spaceport beacon. Less than half a mile away--He set off again. In about six hours, he'd be beyond the Empire's space borders and headed straight for Illyla.
 Yes, she alone had believed! After the prompt collapse of the captain's first commercial venture--a miffel-fur farm, largely on capital borrowed from Councilor Onswud--the future had looked very black. It had even included a probable ten-year stretch of penal servitude for "willful and negligent abuse of intrusted monies." The laws of Nikkeldepain were rough on debtors.
 "But you've always been looking for someone to take out the old Venture and get her back into trade!" Illyla reminded her father tearfully.
 "Hm-m-m, yes! But it's in the blood, my dear! His great-uncle Threbus went the same way! It would be far better to let the law take its course," Councilor Onswud said, glaring at Pausert who remained sulkily silent. He had tried to explain that the mysterious epidemic which suddenly wiped out most of the stock of miffels wasn't his fault. In fact, he more than suspected the tricky hand of young Councilor Rapport who had been wagging futilely around Illyla for the last couple of years!
 "The Venture, now--!" Councilor Onswud mused, stroking his long, craggy chin. "Pausert can handle a ship, at least," he admitted.
 That was how it happened. Were they ever going to be surprised! For even the captain realized that Councilor Onswud was unloading all the dead fish that had gathered the dust of his warehouses for the past fifty years on him and the Venture, in a last, faint hope of getting sole return on those half-forgotten investments. A value of eighty-two thousand maels was placed on the cargo; but if he'd brought even three-quarters of it back in cash, all would have been well.
 Instead--well, it started with that lucky bet on a legal point with an Imperial Official at the Imperial capitol itself. Then came a six-hour race fairly won against a small, fast private yacht--the old Venture 7333 had been a pirate-chaser in the last century and could still produce twice as much speed as her looks suggested. From there on, the captain was socially accepted as a sporting man and was in on a long string of jovial parties and meets.
 Jovial and profitable--the wealthier Imperials just couldn't resist a gamble; and the penalty he always insisted on was that they had to buy!
 He got rid of the stuff right and left! Inside of twelve weeks, nothing remained of the original cargo except two score bundles of expensively-built but useless tinklewood fishing poles and one dozen gross bales of useful but unattractive all-weather cloaks. Even on a bet, nobody would take them! But the captain had a strong hunch those items had been hopefully added to the cargo from his own stocks by Councilor Rapport; so his failure to sell them didn't break his heart.
 He was a neat twenty percent net ahead, at that point-
 And finally came this last-minute rush-delivery of medical supplies to Porlumma on the return route. That haul alone would have repaid the miffel-farm losses three times over!
 The captain grinned broadly into the darkness. Yes, they'd be surprised--but just where was he now?
 He checked again in the narrow street, searching for the port-beacon in the sky. There it was--off to his left and a little behind him. He'd got turned around somehow!
 He set off carefully down an excessively dark little alley. It was one of those towns where everybody locked their front doors at night and retired to lit-up, inclosed courtyards at the backs of the houses. There were voices and the rattling of dishes nearby, and occasional whoops of laughter and singing all around him; but it was all beyond high walls which let little or no light into the alley.
 It ended abruptly in a cross-alley and another wall. After a moment's debate, the captain turned to his left again. Light spilled out on his new route a few hundred yards ahead, where a courtyard was opened on the alley. From it, as he approached, came the sound of doors being violent slammed, and then a sudden, loud mingling of voices.
 "Yeeee-eep!" shrilled a high, childish voice. It could have been mortal agony, terror, or even hysterical laughter. The captain broke into an apprehensive trot.
 "Yes, I see you up there!" a man shouted excitedly in Universum. "I caught you now--you get down from those boxes! I'll skin you alive! Fifty-two customers sick of the stomachache--YOWI"
 The last exclamation was accompanied by a sound as of a small, loosely-built wooden house collapsing, and was followed by a succession of squeals and an angry bellowing, in which the only distinguishable words were: ".... threw the boxes on me!" Then more sounds of splintering wood.
 "Hey!" yelled the captain indignantly from the corner of the alley.
 All action ceased. The narrow courtyard, brightly illuminated under its single overhead bulb, was half covered with a tumbled litter of what appeared to be empty wooden boxes. Standing with his foot temporarily caught in one of them was a very large, fat man dressed all in white and waving a stick. Momentarily cornered between the wall and two of the boxes, over one of which she was trying to climb, was a smallish, fair-haired girl dressed in a smock of some kind, which was also white. She might be about fourteen, the captain thought--a helpless kid, anyway.
 "What you want?" grunted the fat man, pointing the stick with some dignity at the captain.
 "Lay off the kid!" rumbled the captain, edging into the courtyard.
 "Mind your own business!" shouted the fat man, waving his stick like a dub. "I'll take care of her! She--"
 "I never did!" squealed the girl. She burst into tears.
 "Try it, Fat and Ugly!" the captain warned. "I'll ram the stick down your throat!"
 He was very close now. With a sound of grunting exasperation, the fat man pulled his foot free of the box, wheeled suddenly and brought the end of the stick down on the top of the captain's cap. The captain hit him furiously in the middle of the stomach.
 There was a short flurry of activity, somewhat hampered by shattering boxes everywhere. Then the captain stood up, scowling and breathing hard. The fat man remained sitting on the ground, gasping about "... the law!"
 Somewhat to his surprise, the captain discovered the girl standing just behind him. She caught his eye and smiled.
 "My name's Maleen," she offered. She pointed at the fat man. "Is he hurt bad?"
 "Huh--no!" panted the captain. "But maybe we'd better--"
 It was too late! A loud, self-assured voice became audible now at the opening to the alley:
 "Here, here, here, here, here!" it said in the reproachful, situation under-control tone that always seemed the same to the captain, on whatever world and in whichever language he heard it. "What's all this about?" it inquired rhetorically. "You'll all have to come along!" it replied.
 Police Court on Porlumma appeared to be a business conducted on a very sufficient, around-the-clock basis. They were the next case up.
 Nikkeldepain was an odd name, wasn't it, the judge smiled. He then listened attentively to the various charges, countercharges, and denials.
 Bruth the Baker was charged with having struck a citizen of a foreign government on the head with a potentially lethal instrument--produced in evidence. Said citizen had admittedly attempted to interfere as Bruth was attempting to punish his slave Maleen--also produced in evidence-whom he suspected of having added something to a batch of cakes she was working on that afternoon, resulting in illness and complaints from fifty-two of Bruth's customers.
 Said foreign citizen had also used insulting language--the captain admitted under pressure to "Fat and Ugly."
 Some provocation could be conceded for the action taken by Bruth, but not enough. Bruth paled.
 Captain Pausert, of the Republic of Nikkeldepain--everybody but the prisoners smiled this time--was charged (a) with said attempted interference, (b) with said insult, (c) with having frequently and severely struck Bruth the Baker in the course of the subsequent dispute.
 The blow on the head was conceded to have provided a provocation for charge (c)--but not enough
 Nobody seemed to be charging the slave Maleen with anything. The judge only looked at her curiously, and shook his head.
 "As the Court considers this regrettable incident," he remarked, "it looks like two years for you, Bruth; and about three for you, captain. Too bad!"
 The captain had an awful sinking feeling. He had seen something and heard a lot of Imperial court methods in the fringe systems. He could probably get out of this three-year rap; but it would be expensive.
 He realized that the judge was studying him reflectively.
 "The Court wishes to acknowledge," the judge continued, "that the captain's chargeable actions were due largely to a natural feeling of human sympathy for the predicament of the slave Maleen. The Court therefore, would suggest a settlement as follows--subsequent to which all charges could be dropped:
 "That Bruth the Baker resell Maleen of Karres--with whose services he appears to be dissatisfied--for a reasonable sum to Captain Pausert of the Republic of Nikkeldepain."
 Bruth the Baker heaved a gusty sigh of relief. But the captain hesitated. The buying of human slaves by private citizens was a very serious offense in Nikkeldepain! Still, he didn't have to make a record of it. If they weren't going to soak him too much--
 At just the right moment, Maleen of Karres introduced a barely audible, forlorn, sniffling sound.
 "How much are you asking for the kid?" the captain inquired, looking without friendliness at his recent antagonist. A day was coming when he would think less severely of Bruth; but it hadn't come yet.
 Bruth scowled back but replied with a certain eagerness: "A hundred and fifty m--" A policeman standing behind him poked him sharply in the side. Bruth shut up.
 "Seven hundred maels," the judge said smoothly. "There'll be Court charges, and a fee for recording the transaction--" He appeared to make a swift calculation. "Fifteen hundred and forty-two maels--" He turned to a clerk: "You've looked him up?"
 The clerk nodded. "He's right!"
 "And we'll take your check," the judge concluded. He gave the captain a friendly smile. "Next case."
 The captain felt a little bewildered.
 There was something peculiar about this! He was getting out of it much too cheaply. Since the Empire had quit its wars of expansion, young slaves in good health were a high-priced article. Furthermore, he was practically positive that Bruth the Baker had been willing to sell for a tenth of what the captain actually had to pay!
 Well, he wouldn't complain. Rapidly, he signed, sealed and thumbprinted various papers shoved at him by a helpful clerk; and made out a check.
 "I guess," he told Maleen of Karres, "we'd better get along to the ship."
 And now what was he going to do with the kid, he pondered, padding along the unlighted streets with his slave trotting quietly behind him. If he showed up with a pretty girl-slave in Nikkeldepain, even a small one, various good friends there would toss him into ten years or so of penal servitude--immediately after Illyla had personally collected his scalp. They were a moral lot.
 Karres--? "How far off is Karres, Maleen?" he asked into the dark. "It takes about two weeks," Maleen said tearfully.
 Two weeks! The captain's heart sank again. "What are you blubbering about?" he inquired uncomfortably. Maleen choked, sniffed, and began sobbing openly.
 "I have two little sisters!" she cried.
 "Well, well," the captain said encouragingly. "That's nice--you'll be seeing them again soon. I'm taking you home, you know!"
 Great Patham--now he'd said it! But after all-
 But this piece of good news seemed to be having the wrong effect on his slave! Her sobbing grew much more violent.
 "No, I won't," she wailed. "They're here!"
 "Huh?" said the captain. He stopped short. "Where?"
 "And the people they're with are mean to them, too!" wept Maleen.
 The captain's heart dropped clean through his boots. Standing there in the dark, he helplessly watched it coming:
 "You could buy them awfully cheap!" she said. II. 
 In times of stress, the young life of Karres appeared to take to the heights. It might be a mountainous place.
 The Leewit sat on the top shelf of the back wall of the crockery and antiques store, strategically flanked by two expensive-looking vases. She was a doll-sized edition of Maleen; but her eyes were cold and gray instead of blue and tearful. About five or six, the captain vaguely estimated. He wasn't very good at estimating them around that age.
 "Good evening," he said, as he came in through the door. The Crockery and Antiques Shop had been easy to find. Like Bruth the Baker's, it was the one spot in the neighborhood that was all lit up.
 "Good evening, sir!" said what was presumably the store owner, without looking around. He sat with his back to the door, in a chair approximately at the center of the store and facing the Leewit at a distance of about twenty feet.
 "... and there you can stay without food or drink till the Holy Man comes in the morning!" he continued immediately, in the taut voice of a man who has gone through hysteria and is sane again. The captain realized he was addressing the Leewit.
 "Your other Holy Man didn't stay very long!" the diminutive creature piped, also ignoring the captain. Apparently, she had not yet discovered Maleen behind him.
 "This is a stronger denomination--much stronger!" the store owner replied, in a shaking voice but with a sort of relish. "He'll exorcise you, all right, little demon--you'll whistle no buttons off him! Your time is up! Go on and whistle all you want! Bust every vase in the place--"
 The Leewit blinked her gray eyes thoughtfully at him.
 "Might!" she said.
 "But if you try to climb down from there," the store owner went on, on a rising note, "I'll chop you into bits--into little, little bits!"
 He raised his arm as he spoke and weakly brandished what the captain recognized with a start of horror as a highly ornamented but probably still useful antique battle-ax.
 "Ha!" said the Leewit.
 "Beg your pardon, sir!" the captain said, clearing his throat.
 "Good evening, sir!" the store owner repeated, without looking around. "What can I do for you?"
 "I came to inquire," the captain said hesitantly, "about that child."
 The store owner shifted about in his chair and squinted at the captain with red-rimmed eyes.
 "You're not a Holy Man!" he said.
 "Hello, Maleen!" the Leewit said suddenly. "That him?"
 "We've come to buy you," Maleen said. "Shut up!"
 "Good!" said the Leewit.
 "Buy it? Are you mocking me, sir?" the store owner inquired.
 "Shut up, Moonell!" A thin, dark, determined-looking woman had appeared in the doorway that led through the back wall of the store. She moved out a step under the shelves; and the Leewit leaned down from the top shelf and hissed. The woman moved hurriedly back into the doorway.
 "Maybe he means it," she said in a more subdued voice.
 "I can't sell to a citizen of the Empire," the store owner said defeatedly.
 "I'm not a citizen," the captain said shortly. This time, he wasn't going to name it.
 "No, he's from Nikkel--" Maleen began.
 "Shut up, Maleen!" the captain said helplessly in turn.
 "I never heard of Nikkel," the store owner muttered doubtfully.
 "Maleen!" the woman called shrilly. "That's the name of one of the others--Bruth the Baker got her. He means it, all right! He's buying them--"
 "A hundred and fifty maels!" the captain said craftily, remembering Bruth the Baker. "In cash!"
 The store owner looked dazed.
 "Not enough, Moonell!" the woman called. "Look at all it's broken! Five hundred maels!"
 There was a sound then, so thin the captain could hardly hear it. It pierced at his eardrums like two jabs of a delicate needle. To right and left of him, two highly glazed little jugs went "Clink-clink!", showed a sudden veining of cracks, and collapsed.
 A brief silence settled on the store. And now that he looked around more closely, the captain could spot here and there other little piles of shattered crockery--and places where similar ruins apparently had been swept up, leaving only traces of colored dust.
 The store owner laid the ax down carefully beside his chair, stood up, swaying a little, and came towards the captain.
 "You offered me a hundred and fifty maels!" he said rapidly as he approached. "I accept it here, now, see--before witnesses!" He grabbed the captain's right hand in both of his and pumped it up and down vigorously. "Sold!" he yelled.
 Then he wheeled around in a leap and pointed a shaking hand at the Leewit.
 "And NOW," he howled, "break something! Break anything! You're his! I'll sue him for every mael he ever made and ever will!"
 "Oh, do come help me down, Maleen!" the Leewit pleaded prettily.
 For a change, the store of Wansing, the jeweler, was dimly lit and very quiet. It was a sleek, fashionable place in a fashionable shopping block near the spaceport. The front door was unlocked, and Wansing was in.
 The three of them entered quietly, and the door sighed quietly shut behind them. Beyond a great crystal display-counter, Wansing was moving about among a number of opened shelves, talking softly to himself. Under the crystal of the counter, and in close-packed rows on the satin-covered shelves, reposed a many-colored gleaming and glittering and shining. Wansing was no piker.
 "Good evening, sir!" the captain said across the counter.
 "It's morning!" the Leewit remarked from the other side of Maleen.
 "Maleen!" said the captain.
 'We're keeping out of this," Maleen said to the Leewit.
 "All right," said the Leewit.
 Wansing had come around jerkily at the captain's greeting, but had made no other move. Like all the slave owners the captain had met on Porlumma so far, Wansing seemed unhappy. Otherwise, he was a large, dark, sleek-looking man with jewels in his ears and a smell of expensive oils and perfumes about him.
 "This place is under constant visual guard, of course!" he told the captain gently. "Nothing could possibly happen to me here. Why am I so frightened?"
 "Not of me, I'm sure!" the captain said with an uncomfortable attempt at geniality. "I'm glad your store's still open," he went on briskly. "I'm here on business--"
 "Oh, yes, it's still open, of course," Wansing said. He gave the captain a slow smile and turned back to his shelves. "I'm making inventory, that's why! I've been making inventory since early yesterday morning. I've counted them all seven times--" "You're very thorough," the captain said.
 "Very, very thorough!" Wansing nodded to the shelves. "The last time I found I had made a million maels. But twice before that, I had lost approximately the same amount. I shall have to count them again, I suppose!" He closed a shelf softly. "I'm sure I counted those before. But they move about constantly. Constantly! It's horrible."
 "You've got a slave here called Goth," the captain said, driving to the point.
 "Yes, I have!" Wansing said, nodding. "And I'm sure she understands by now I meant no harm! I do, at any rate. It was perhaps a little--but I'm sure she understands now, or will soon!"
 "Where is she?" the captain inquired, a trifle uneasily.
 "In her room perhaps," Wansing suggested. "It's not so bad when she's there in her room with the door closed. But often she sits in the dark and looks at you as you go past--" He opened another drawer, and closed it quietly again. "Yes, they do move!" he whispered, as if confirming an earlier suspicion. "Constantly--"
 "Look, Wansing," the captain said in a loud, firm voice. "I'm not a citizen of the Empire. I want to buy this Goth! I'll pay you a hundred and fifty maels, cash."
 Wansing turned around completely again and looked at the captain. "Oh, you do?" he said. "You're not a citizen?" He walked a few steps to the side of the counter, sat down at a small desk and turned a light on over it. Then he put his face in his hands for a moment.
 "I'm a wealthy man," he muttered. "An influential man! The name of Wansing counts for a great deal on Porlumma. When the Empire suggests you buy, you buy, of course--but it need not have been I who bought her! I thought she would be useful in the business--and then, even I could not sell her again within the Empire. She has been here for a week!"
 He looked up at the captain and smiled. "One hundred and fifty maels!" he said. "Sold! There are records to be made out--" He reached into a drawer and took out some printed forms. He began to write rapidly. The captain produced identifications. r
 Maleen said suddenly: "Goth?"
 "Plight here," a voice murmured. Wansing's hand jerked sharply, but he did not look up. He kept on writing.
 Something small and lean and bonelessly supple, dressed in a dark jacket and leggings, came across the thick carpets of Wansing's store and stood behind the captain. This one might be about nine or ten.
 "I'll take your check, captain!" Wansing said politely. "You must be an honest man. Besides, I want to frame it."
 "And now," the captain heard himself say in the remote voice of one who moves through a strange dream, "I suppose we could go to the ship."
 The sky was gray and cloudy; and the streets were lightening. Goth, he noticed, didn't resemble her sisters. She had brown hair cut short a few inches below her ears, and brown eyes with long, black lashes. Her nose was short and her chin was pointed. She made him think of some thin, carnivorous creature, like a weasel.
 She looked up at him briefly, grinned, and said: "Thanks!"
 "What was wrong with him?" chirped the Leewit, walking backwards for a last view of Wansing's store.
 "Tough crook," muttered Goth. The Leewit giggled.
 "You premoted this just dandy, Maleen!" she stated next.
 "Shut up," said Maleen.
 "All right," said the Leewit. She glanced up at the captain's face. "You been fighting!" she said virtuously. "Did you win?"
 "Of course, the captain won!" said Maleen.
 "Good for you!" said the Leewit.
 "What about the take-off?" Goth asked the captain. She seemed a little worried.
 "Nothing to it!" the captain said stoutly, hardly bothering to wonder how she'd guessed the take-off was the one operation on which he and the old Venture consistently failed to co-operate.
 "No," said Goth, "I meant when?"
 "Right now," said the captain. "They've already cleared us. We'll get the sign any second."
 "Good," said Goth. She walked off slowly down the hall towards the back of the ship.
 The take-off was pretty bad, but the Venture made it again. Half an hour later, with Porlumma dwindling safely behind them, the captain switched to automatic and climbed out of his chair. After considerable experimentation, he got the electric butler adjusted to four breakfasts, hot, with coffee. It was accomplished with a great deal of advice and attempted assistance from the Leewit, rather less from Maleen, and no comments from Goth.
 "Everything will be coming along in a few minutes now!" he announced. Afterwards, it struck him there had been a quality of grisly prophecy about the statement.
 "If you'd listened to me," said the Leewit, "we'd have been done eating a quarter of an hour ago!" She was perspiring but triumphant--she had been right all along.
 "Say, Maleen," she said suddenly, "you premoting again?"
 Premoting? The captain looked at Maleen. She seemed pale and troubled.
 "Spacesick?" he suggested. "I've got some pills--"
 "No, she's premoting," the Leewit said scowling. "What's up, Maleen?"
 "Shut up," said Goth.
 "All right," said the Leewit. She was silent a moment, and then began to wriggle. "Maybe we'd better--"
 "Shut up," said Maleen.
 "It's all ready," said Goth.
 "What's all ready" asked the captain.
 "All right," said the Leewit. She looked at the captain. "Nothing," she said.
 He looked at them then, and they looked at him--one set each of gray eyes, and brown, and blue. They were all sitting around the control room floor in a circle, the fifth side of which was occupied by the electric butler.
 What peculiar little waifs, the captain thought. He hadn't perhaps really realized until now just how very peculiar. They were still staring at him.
 "Well, well!" he said heartily. "So Maleen 'premotes' and gives people stomach-aches."
 Maleen smiled dimly and smoothed back her yellow hair.
 "They just thought they were getting them," she murmured.
 "Mass history," explained the Leewit, offhandedly.
 "Hysteria," said Goth. "The Imperials get their hair up about us every so often."
 "I noticed that," the captain nodded. "And little Leewit here--she whistles and busts things."
 "It's the Leewit," the Leewit said, frowning.
 "Oh, I see," said the captain. "Like the captain, eh?"
 "That's right," said the Leewit. She smiled.
 "And what does little Goth do?" the ca'ptain addressed the third witch.
 Little Goth appeared pained. Maleen answered for her.
 "Goth teleports mostly," she said.
 "Oh, she does?" said the captain. "I've heard about that trick, too," he added lamely. 
 "Just small stuff really!" Goth said abruptly. She reached into the top of her jacket and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle the size of the captain's two fists. The four ends of the cloth were knotted together. Goth undid the knot. "Like this," she said and poured out the contents on the rug between them. There was a sound like a big bagful of marbles being spilled.
 "Great Patham!" the captain swore, staring down at what was a cool quarter-million in jewel stones, or he was still a miffel-farmer.
 "Good gosh," said the Leewit, bouncing to her feet. "Maleen, we better get at it right away!"
 The two blondes darted from the room. The captain hardly noticed their going. He was staring at Goth.
 "Child," he said, "don't you realize they hang you without trial on places like Porlumma, if you're caught with stolen goods?"
 "We're not on Porlumma," said Goth. She looked slightly annoyed. "They're for you. You spent money on us, didn't you?"
 "Not that kind of money," said the captain. "If Wansing noticed-They're Wansing's, I suppose?"
 "Sure!" said Goth. "Pulled them in just before take-off!"
 "If he reported, there'll be police ships on our tail any--"
 "Goth!" Maleen shrilled.
 Goth's head came around and she rolled up on her feet in one motion. "Coming," she shouted. "Excuse me," she murmured to the captain. Then she, too, was out of the room.
 But again, the captain scarcely noticed her departure. He had rushed to the control desk with a sudden awful certainty and switched on all screens.
 There they were! Two sleek, black ships coming up fast from behind, and already almost in gun-range! They weren't regular police boats, the captain recognized, but auxiliary craft of the Empire's frontier fleets. He rammed the Venture's drives full on. Immediately, red-and-black fire blossoms began to sprout in space behind him--then a finger of flame stabbed briefly past, not a hundred yards to the right of the ship.
 But the communicator stayed dead. Porlumma preferred risking the sacrifice of Wansing's jewels to giving them a chance to surrender! To do the captain justice, his horror was due much more to the fate awaiting his three misguided charges than to the fact that he was going to share it.
 He was putting the Venture through a wildly erratic and, he hoped, aim-destroying series of sideways hops and forward lunges with one hand, and trying to unlimber the turrets of the nova guns with the other, when suddenly--!
 No, he decided at once, there was no use trying to understand it-There were just no more Empire ships around. The screens all blurred and darkened simultaneously; and, for a short while, a darkness went flowing and coiling lazily past the Venture. Light jumped out of it at him once, in a cold, ugly glare, and receded again in a twisting, unnatural fashion. The Venture's drives seemed dead.
 Then, just as suddenly, the old ship jerked, shivered, roared aggrievedly, and was hurling herself along on her own power again!
 But Porlumma's sun was no longer in evidence. Stars gleamed and shifted distantly against the blackness of deep space all about. The patterns seemed familiar, but he wasn't a good enough navigator to be sure.
 The captain stood up stiffly, feeling a heavy cloud. And at that moment, with a wild, hilarious clacking like a metallic hen, the electric butler delivered four breakfasts, hot, one after the other, right onto the center of the control room floor.
 The first voice said distinctly: "Shall we just leave it on?"
 A second voice, considerably more muffled, replied: "Yes, let's! You never know when you need it--"
 The third voice, tucked somewhere in between them, said simply: "Whew!"
 Peering about the dark room in bewilderment, the captain realized suddenly that the voices had come from the speaker of an intership communicator, leading to what had once been the Venture's captain's cabin.
 He listened; but only a dim murmuring came from it now, and then nothing at all. He started towards the hall, then returned and softly switched off the communicator. He went quietly down the hall until he came to the captain's cabin. Its door was closed.
 He listened a moment, and opened it suddenly.
 There was a trio of squeals:
 "Oh, don't! You spoiled it!"
 The captain stood motionless. Just one glimpse had been given him of what seemed to be a bundle of twisted black wires arranged loosely like the frame of a truncated cone on--or was it just above?--a table in the center of the cabin. Where the tip of the cone should have been burned a round, swirling, orange fire. About it, their faces reflecting its glow, stood the three witches.
 Then the fire vanished; the wires collapsed. There was only ordinary light in the room. They were looking up at him variously--Maleen with smiling regret, the Leewit in frank annoyance, Goth with no expression at all.
 "What out of Great Patham's Seventh Hell was that?" inquired the captain, his hair bristling slowly.
 The Leewit looked at Goth; Goth looked at Maleen. Maleen said doubtfully: "We can just tell you its name--"
 "That was the Sheewash Drive," said Goth.
 "The what-drive?" asked the captain.
 "Sheewash," repeated Maleen.
 "The one you have to do it with yourself," the Leewit said helpfully.
 "Shut up," said Maleen.
 There was a long pause. The captain looked down at the handful of thin, black, twelve-inch wires scattered about the table top. He touched one of them. It was dead-cold.
 "I see," he said. "I guess we're all going to have a long talk." Another pause. "Where are we now?"
 "About three light-years down the way you were going," said Goth. "We only worked it thirty seconds."
 "Twenty-eight!" corrected Maleen, with the authority of her years. "The Leewit was getting tired."
 "I see," said Captain Pausert carefully. "Well, let's go have some breakfast." III. 
 They ate with a silent voraciousness, dainty Maleen, the exquisite Leewit, supple Goth, all alike. The captain, long finished, watched them with amazement and--now at last--with something like awe.
 "It's the Sheewash Drive," explained Maleen finally, catching his expression. "Takes it out of you!" said Goth. The Leewit grunted affirmatively and stuffed on.
 "Can't do too much of it," said Maleen. "Or too often. It kills you sure!"
 "What," said the captain, "is the Sheewash Drive?"
 They became reticent. People did it on Karres, said Maleen, when they had to go somewhere else fast. Everybody knew how there. "But of course," she added, "we're pretty young to do it right!" '
 "We did it pretty good!" the Leewit contradicted positively. She seemed to be finished at last.
 "But how?" said the captain.
 Reticence thickened almost visibly. If you couldn't do it, said Maleen, you couldn't understand it either.
 He gave it up, for the time being.
 "I guess I'll have to take you home next," he said; and they agreed.
 Karres, it developed, was in the Iverdahl System. He couldn't find any planet of that designation listed in his maps of the area, but that meant nothing. The maps were old and often inaccurate, and local names changed a lot.
 Barring the use of weird and deadly miracle-drives, that detour was going to cost him almost a month in time--and a good chunk of his profits in power used up. The jewels Goth had illegally teleported must, of course, be returned to their owner, he explained. He'd intended to look severely at the culprit at that point; but she'd meant well, after all! They were extremely peculiar children, but still children--they couldn't really understand.
 He would stop off en route to Karres at an Empire planet with banking facilities to take care of that matter, the captain added. A planet far enough off so the police wouldn't be likely to take any particular interest in the Venture.
 A dead silence greeted this schedule. It appeared that the representatives of Karres did not think much of his logic.
 "Well," Maleen sighed at last, "we'll see you get your money back some other way then!"
 The junior witches nodded coldly.
 "How did you three happen to get into this fix?" the captain inquired, with the intention of changing the subject.
 They'd left Karres together on a jaunt of their own, they explained. No, they hadn't run away--he got the impression that such trips were standard procedure for juveniles in that place. They were on another planet, a civilized one but beyond the borders and law of Empire, when the town they were in was raided by a small fleet of slavers. They were taken along with most of the local youngsters.
 "It's a wonder," he said reflectively, "you didn't take over the ship."
 "Oh, brother!" exclaimed the Leewit.
 "Not that ship!" said Goth.
 "That was an Imperial Slaver!" Maleen informed him. "You behave yourself every second on those crates."
 Just the same, the captain thought as he settled himself to rest in the control room on a couch he had set up there, it was no longer surprising that the Empire wanted no young slaves from Karres to be transported into the interior! Oddest sort of children--But he ought to be able to get his expenses paid by their relatives. Something very profitable might even be made of this deal-
 Have to watch the record-entries though! Nikkeldepain's laws were explicit about the penalties invoked by anything resembling the purchase and sale of slaves.
 He'd thoughtfully left the intership communicator adjusted so he could listen in on their conversation in the captain's cabin. However, there had been nothing for some time beyond frequent bursts of childish giggling. Then came a succession of piercing shrieks from the Leewit. It appeared she was being forcibly washed behind the ears by Maleen and obliged to brush her teeth, in preparation for bedtime.
 It had been agreed that he was not to enter the cabin, because--for reasons not given--they couldn't keep the Sheewash Drive on in his presence; and they wanted to have it ready, in case of an emergency. Piracy was rife beyond the Imperial borders, and the Venture would keep beyond the border for a good part of the trip, to avoid the more pressing danger of police pursuit instigated by Porlumma. The captain had explained the potentialities of the nova guns the Venture boasted, or tried to. Possibly, they hadn't understood. At any rate, they seemed unimpressed.
 The Sheewash Drive! Boy, he thought in sudden excitement, if he could just get the principles of that. Maybe he would!
 He raised his head suddenly. The Leewit's voice had lifted clearly over the communicator:
 ".... not such a bad old dope!" the childish treble remarked.
 The captain blinked indignantly.
 "He's not so old," Maleen's soft voice returned. "And he's certainly no dope!"
 He smiled. Good kid, Maleen.
 "Yeah, yeah!" squeaked the Leewit offensively. "Maleen's sweet on thu-ulp!"
 A vague commotion continued for a while, indicating, he hoped, that someone he could mention was being smothered under a pillow.
 He drifted off to sleep before it was settled.
 If you didn't happen to be thinking of what they'd done, they seemed more or less like normal children. Right from the start, they displayed a flattering interest in the captain and his background; and he told them all about everything and everybody in Nikkeldepain. Finally, he even showed them his treasured pocket-sized picture of Illyla--the one with which he'd held many cozy conversations during the earlier part of his trip.
 Almost at once, though, he realized that was a mistake. They studied it intently in silence, their heads crowded close together.
 "Oh, brother!" the Leewit whispered then, with entirely the wrong kind of inflection.
 "Just what did you mean by that?" the captain inquired coldly.
 "Sweet!" murmured Goth. But it was the way she closed her eyes briefly, as though gripped by a light spasm of nausea.
 "Shut up, Goth!" Maleen said sharply. "I think she's very swee ... I mean, she looks very nice!" she told the captain.
 The captain was disgruntled. Silently, he retrieved the maligned Illyla and returned her to his breast pocket. Silently, he went off and left them standing there.
 But afterwards, in private, he took it out again and studied it worriedly. His~Illyla! He shifted the picture back and forth under the light. It wasn't really a very good picture of her, he decided. It had been bungled! From certain angles, one might even say that Illyla did look the least bit insipid.
 What was he thinking, he thought, shocked.
 He unlimbered the nova gun turrets next and got in a little firing practice. They had been sealed when he took over the Venture and weren't supposed to be used, except in absolute emergencies. They were somewhat uncertain weapons, though very effective, and Nikkeldepain had turned to safer forms of armament many decades ago. But on the third day out from Nikkeldepain, the captain made a brief notation in his log:
 "Attacked by two pirate craft. Unsealed nova guns. Destroyed one attacker; survivor fled--"
 He was rather pleased by that crisp, hard-bitten description of desperate space-adventure, and enjoyed rereading it occasionally. It wasn't true, though. He had put in an interesting four hours at the time pursuing and annihilating large, craggy chunks of substance of a meteorite-cloud he found the Venture plowing through. Those nova guns were fascinating stuff! You'd sight the turrets on something; and so long as it didn't move after that, it was all right. If it did move, it got it--unless you relented and deflected the turrets first. They were just the thing for arresting a pirate in midspace.
 The Venture dipped back into the Empire's borders four days later and headed for the capitol of the local province. Police ships challenged them twice on the way in; and the captain found considerable comfort in the awareness that his passengers foregathered silently in their cabin on these occasions. They didn't tell him they were set to use the Sheewash Drive-somehow it had never been mentioned since that first day; but he knew the queer orange fire was circling over its skimpy framework of twisted wires there and ready to act.
 However, the space police waved him on, satisfied with routine identification. Apparently, the Venture had not become generally known as a criminal ship, to date.
 Maleen accompanied him to the banking institution that was to return Wansing's property to Porlumma. Her sisters, at the captain's definite request, remained on the ship.
 The transaction itself went off without a visible hitch. The jewels would reach their destination in Porlumma within a month. But he had to take out a staggering sum in insurance--"Piracy, thieves!" smiled the clerk. "Even summary capital punishment won't keep the rats down." And, of course, he had to register name, ship, home planet, and so on. But since they already had all that information in Porlumma, he gave it without hesitation.
 On the way back to the spaceport, he sent off a sealed message by radio-relay to the bereaved jeweler, informing him of the action taken, and regretting the misunderstanding.
 He felt a little better after that, though the insurance payment had been a severe blow! If he didn't manage to work out a decent profit on Karres somehow, the losses on the miffel farm would hardly be covered now.
 Then he noticed that Maleen was getting uneasy.
 "We'd better hurry!" was all she would say, however. Her face grew pale.
 The captain understood. She was having another premonition! The hitch to this premoting business was, apparently, that when something was brewing you were informed of the bare fact but had to guess at most of the details. They grabbed an aircab and raced back to the spaceport.
 They had just been cleared there when he spotted a small group of uniformed men coming along the dock on the double. They stopped short and then scattered, as the Venture lurched drunkenly sideways into the air. Everyone else in sight was scattering, too.
 That was a very bad take-off--one of the captain's worst! Once afloat, however, he ran the ship promptly into the nightside of the planet and turned her nose towards the border. The old pirate-chaser had plenty of speed when you gave her the reins; and throughout the entire next sleep-period, he let her use it all.
 The Sheewash Drive was not required that time.
 Next day, he had a lengthy private talk with Goth on the Golden Rule and the Law, with particular reference to individual property rights. If Councilor Onswud had been monitoring the sentiments expressed by the captain, he could not have failed to rumble surprised approval. The delinquent herself listened impassively; but the captain fancied she showed distinct signs of being rather impressed by his earnestness.
 It was two days after that--well beyond the borders again--when they were obliged to make an unscheduled stop at a mining moon. For the captain discovered he had already miscalculated the extent to which the prolonged run on overdrive after leaving the capitol was going to deplete the Venture's reserves. They would have to juice up-
 A large, extremely handsome Sirian freighter lay beside them at the Moon station. It was half a battlecraft really, since it dealt regularly beyond the borders. They had to wait while it was being serviced; and it took a long time. The Sirians turned out to be as unpleasant as their ship was good-looking--a snooty, conceited, hairy lot who talked only their own dialect and pretended to be unfamiliar with Imperial Universum.
 The captain found himself getting irked by their bad manners--particularly when he discovered they were laughing over his argument with the service superintendent about the cost of repowering the Venture. ^ "You're out in deep space, captain!" said the superintendent. "And you haven't juice enough left even to travel back to the Border. You can't expect Imperial prices here!"
 "It's not what you charged them!" The captain angrily jerked his thumb at the Sirian.
 "Regular customers!" the superintendent shrugged. "You start coming by here every three months like they do, and we can make an arrangement with you, too."
 It was outrageous--it actually put the Venture back in the red! But there was no help for it.
 Nor did it improve the captain's temper when he muffed the take-off once more--and then had to watch the Sirian floating into space, as sedately as a swan, a little behind him!
 An hour later, as he sat glumly before the controls, debating the chance of recouping his losses before returning to Nikkeldepain, Maleen and the Leewit hurriedly entered the room. They did something to a port screen. "They sure are!" the Leewit exclaimed. She seemed childishly pleased. "Are what?" the captain inquired absently.
 "Following us," said Maleen. She did not sound pleased. "It's that Sirian ship, Captain Pausert--"
 The captain stared bewilderedly at the screen. There was a ship in focus there. It was quite obviously the Sirian and, just as obviously, it was following them.
 "What do they want?" he wondered. "They're stinkers but they're not pirates. Even if they were, they wouldn't spend an hour running after a crate like the Venture!"
 Maleen said nothing. The Leewit observed: "Oh, brother! Got their bow-turrets out now--better get those nova guns ready!"
 "But it's all nonsense!" the captain said, flushing angrily. He turned suddenly towards the communicators. "What's that Empire general beamlength?"
 ".0044," said Maleen.
 A roaring, abusive voice flooded the control room immediately. The one word understandable to the captain was "Venture." It was repeated frequently, sometimes as if it were a question.
 "Sirian!" said the captain. "Can you understand them?" he asked Maleen.
 She shook her head. "The Leewit can--"
 The Leewit nodded, her gray eyes glistening.
 "What are they saying?"
 "They says you're for stopping," the Leewit translated rapidly, but apparently retaining much of the original sentence-structure. "They says you're for skinning alive ... ha! They says you're for stopping right now and for only hanging. They says--"
 Maleen scuttled from the control room. The Leewit banged the communicator with one small fist.
 "Beak-Wock!" she shrieked. It sounded like that, anyway. The loud voice paused a moment.
 "Beak-Wock?" it returned in an aggrieved, demanding roar.
 "Beak-Wock!" the Leewit affirmed with apparent delight. She rattled off a string of similar-sounding syllables. She paused.
 A howl of inarticulate wrath responded.
 The captain, in a whirl of outraged emotions, was yelling at the Leewit to shut up, at the Sirian to go to Great Patham's Second Hell--the worst--and wrestling with the nova gun adjustors at the same time. He'd had about enough! He'd--
 SSShoosh! It was the Sheewash Drive.
 "And where are we now?" the captain inquired, in a voice of unnatural calm.
 "Same place, just about," said the Leewit. "Ship's still on the screen. Way back though--take them an hour again to catch up." She seemed disappointed; then brightened. "You got lots of time to get the guns ready!"
 The captain didn't answer. He was marching down the hall towards the rear of the Venture. He passed the captain's cabin and noted the door was shut. He went on without pausing. He was mad clean through--he knew what had happened!
 After all he'd told her, Goth had teleported again.
 It was all there, in the storage. Items of half a pound in weight seemed to be as much as she could handle. But amazing quantities of stuff had met that one requirement--bottles filled with what might be perfume or liquor or dope, expensive-looking garments and cloths in a shining variety of colors, small boxes, odds, ends and, of course, jewelry!
 He spent half an hour getting it loaded into a steel space crate. He wheeled the crate into the rear lock, sealed the inside lock and pulled the switch that activated the automatic launching device.
 The outside lock clicked shut. He stalked back to the control room. The Leewit was still in charge, fiddling with the communicators.
 "I could try a whistle over them," she suggested, glancing up. She added: "But they'd bust somewheres, sure."
 "Get them on again!" the captain said.
 "Yes, sir," said the Leewit surprised.
 The roaring voice came back faintly.
 "SHUT UP!" the captain shouted in Imperial Universum.
 The voice shut up.
 "Tell them they can pick up their stuff--it's been dumped out in a crate!" the captain told the Leewit. "Tell them I'm proceeding on my course. Tell them if they follow me one light-minute beyond that crate, I'll come back for them, shoot their front end off, shoot their rear end off, and ram 'em in the middle."
 "Yes, SIR!" the Leewit sparkled. They proceeded on their course.
 Nobody followed.
 "Now I want to speak to Goth," the captain announced. He was still at a high boil. "Privately," he added. "Back in the storage--"
 Goth followed him expressionlessly into the storage. He closed the door to the hall. He'd broken off a two-foot length from the tip of one of Councilor Rapport's overpriced tinklewood fishing poles. It made a fair switch.
 But Goth looked terribly small just now! He cleared his throat. He wished for a moment he were back on Nikkeldepain.
 "I warned you," he said.
 Goth didn't move. Between one second and the next, however, she seemed to grow remarkably. Her brown eyes focused on the captain's Adam's apple; her lip lifted at one side. A slightly hungry look came into her face.
 "Wouldn't try that!" she murmured.
 Mad again, the captain reached out quickly and got a handful of leathery cloth. There was a blur of motion, and what felt like a small explosion against his left kneecap. He grunted with anguished surprise and fell back on a bale of Councilor Rapport's all-weather cloaks. But he had retained his grip--Goth fell half on top of him, and that was still a favorable position. Then her head snaked around, her neck seemed to extend itself; and her teeth snapped his wrist.
 Weasels don't let go--
 "Didn't think he'd have the nerve!" Goth's voice came over the communicator. There was a note of grudging admiration in it. It seemed that she was inspecting her bruises.
 All tangled up in the job of bandaging his freely bleeding wrist, the captain hoped she'd find a good plenty to count. His knee felt the size of a sofa pillow and throbbed like a piston engine.
 "The captain is a brave man," Maleen was saying reproachfully. "You should have known better--"
 "He's not very smart, though!" the Leewit remarked suggestively.
 There was a short silence.
 "Is he? Goth? Eh?" the Leewit urged.
 "Perhaps not very," said Goth.
 "You two lay off him!" Maleen ordered. "Useless," she added meaningly, "you want to swim back to Karres--on the Egger Route!"
 "Not me," the Leewit said briefly.
 "You could still do it, I guess," said Goth. She seemed to be reflecting. "All right--we'll lay off him. It was a fair fight, anyway." IV. 
 They raised Karres the sixteenth day after leaving Porlumma. There had been no more incidents; but then, neither had there been any more stops or other contacts with the defenseless Empire. Maleen had cooked up a poultice which did wonders for his knee. With the end of the trip in sight, all tensions had relaxed; and Maleen, at least, seemed to grow hourly more regretful at the prospect of parting.
 After a brief study, Karres could be distinguished easily enough by the fact that it moved counterclockwise to all the other planets of the Iverdahl System.
 Well, it would, the captain thought.
 They came soaring into its atmosphere on the dayside without arousing any visible interest. No communicator signals reached them; and no other ships showed up to look them over. Karres, in fact, had all the appearance of a completely uninhabited world. There were a larger number of seas, too big to be called Lakes and to small to be oceans, scattered over its surface. There was one enormously towering ridge of mountains that ran from pole to pole, and any number of lesser chains. There were two good-sized ice caps; and the southern section of the planet was speckled with intermittent stretches of snow. Almost all of it seemed to be dense forest.
 It was a handsome place, in a wild, somber way.
 They went gliding over it, from noon through morning and into the dawn fringe--the captain at the controls, Goth and the Leewit flanking him at the screens, and Maleen behind him to do the directing. After a few initial squeals, the Leewit became oddly silent. Suddenly the captain realized she was blubbering.
 Somehow, it startled him to discover that her homecoming had affected the Leewit to that extent. He felt Goth reach out behind him and put her hand on the Leewit's shoulder. The smallest witch sniffled happily.
 " 'S beautiful!" she growled.
 He felt a resurge of the wondering, protective friendliness they had aroused in him at first. They must have been having a rough time of it, at that. He sighed; it seemed a pity they hadn't got along a little better!
 "Where's everyone hiding?" he inquired, to break up the mood. So far, there hadn't been a sign of human habitation.
 "There aren't many people on Karres," Maleen said from behind his shoulder. "But we're going to The Town--you'll meet about half of them there!" 
 "What's that place down there?" the captain asked with sudden interest. Something like an enormous lime-white bowl seemed to have been set flush into the floor of the wide valley up which they were moving.
 "That's the Theater where ... ouch!" the Leewit said. She fell silent then but turned to give Maleen a resentful look.
 "Something strangers shouldn't be told about, eh?" the captain said tolerantly. Goth glanced at him from the side.
 "We've got rules," she said.
 He let the ship down a little as they passed over "the Theater where--" It was a sort of large, circular arena, with numerous steep tiers of seats running up around it. But all was bare and deserted now.
 On Maleen's direction, they took the next valley fork to the right and dropped lower still. He had his first look at Karres animal life then. A flock of large, creamy-white birds, remarkably Terrestrial in appearance, flapped by just below them, apparently unconcerned about the ship. The forest underneath had opened out into a long stretch of lush meadow land, with small creeks winding down into its center. Here a herd of several hundred head of beasts was grazing--beasts of mastodonic size and build, with hairless, shiny black hides. The mouths of their long, heavy heads were twisted up into sardonic, crocodilian grins as they blinked up at the passing Venture.
 "Black Bollems," said Goth, apparently enjoying the captain's expression. "Lots of them around; they're tame. But the gray mountain ones are good hunting."
 "Good eating, too!" the Leewit said. She licked her lips daintily. "Breakfast--!" she sighed, her thoughts diverted to a familiar track. "And we ought to be just in time!"
 "There's the field!" Maleen cried, pointing. "Set her down there, captain!"
 The "field" was simply a flat meadow of close-trimmed grass running smack against the mountainside to their left. One small vehicle, bright blue in color, was parked on it; and it was bordered on two sides by very tall, blue-black trees.
 That was all.
 The captain shook his head. Then he set her down.
 The town of Karres was a surprise to him in a good many ways. For one thing, there was much more of it than you would have thought possible after flying over the area. It stretched for miles through the forest, up the flanks of the mountain and across the valley--little clusters of houses or individual ones, each group screened from all the rest and from the sky overhead by the trees.
 They liked color on Karres; but then they hid it away! The houses were bright as flowers, red and white, apple-green, golden-brown--all spick and span, scrubbed and polished and aired with that brisk, green forest smell. At various times of the day, there was also the smell of remarkably good things to eat. There were brooks and pools and a great number of shaded vegetable gardens to the town. The.e were risky-looking treetop playgrounds, and treetop platforms and galleries which seemed to have no particular purpose. On the ground was mainly an enormously confusing maze of paths--narrow trails of sandy soil snaking about among great brown tree roots and chunks of gray mountain rock, and half covered with fallen needle leaves. The first six times the captain set out unaccompanied, he'd lost his way hopelessly within minutes, and had to be guided back out of the forest.
 But the most hidden of all were the people! About four thousand of them were supposed to live in the town, with as many more scattered about the planet. But you never got to see more than three or four at any one time--except when now and then a pack of children, who seemed to the captain to be uniformly of the Leewit's size, would burst suddenly out of the undergrowth across a path before you, and vanish again.
 As for the others, you did hear someone singing occasionally; or there might be a whole muted concert going on all about, on a large variety of wooden musical instruments which they seemed to enjoy tootling with, gently.
 But it wasn't a real town at all, the captain thought. They didn't live like people, these Witches of Karres--it was more like a flock of strange forest birds that happened to be nesting in the same general area. Another thing: they appeared to be busy enough--but what was their business?
 He discovered he was reluctant to ask Toll too many questions about it. Toll was the mother of his three witches; but only Goth really resembled her. It was difficult to picture Goth becoming smoothly matured and pleasantly rounded; but that was Toll. She had the same murmuring voice, the same air of sideways observation and secret reflection. And she answered all the captain's questions with apparent frankness; but he never seemed to get much real information out of what she said.
 It was odd, too! Because he was spending several hours a day in her company, or in one of the next rooms at any rate, while she went about her housework. Toll's daughters had taken him home when they landed; and he was installed in the room that belonged to their father--busy just now, the captain gathered, with some sort of research of a geological nature elsewhere on Karres. The arrangement worried him a little at first, particularly since Toll and he were mostly alone in the house. Maleen was going to some kind of school; she left early in the morning and came back late in the afternoon; and Goth and the Leewit were just plain running wild! They usually got in long after the captain had gone to bed and were off again before he turned out for breakfast.
 It hardly seemed like the right way to raise them! One afternoon, he found the Leewit curled up and asleep in the chair he usually occupied on the porch before the house. She slept there for four solid hours, while the captain sat nearby and leafed gradually through a thick book with illuminated pictures called "Histories of Ancient Yarthe." Now and then, he sipped at a cool, green, faintly intoxicating drink Toll had placed quietly beside him some while before, or sucked an aromatic smoke from the enormous pipe with a floor rest, which he understood was a favorite of Toll's husband.
 Then the Leewit woke up suddenly, uncoiled, gave him a look between a scowl and a friendly grin, slipped off the porch and vanished among the trees.
 He couldn't quite figure that look! It might have meant nothing at all in particular, but-
 The captain laid down his book then and worried a little more. It was true, of course, that nobody seemed in the least concerned about his presence. All of Karres appeared to know about him, and he'd met quite a number of people by now in a casual way. But nobody came around to interview him or so much as dropped in for a visit. However, Toll's husband presumably would be returning presently, and-
 How long had he been here, anyway?
 Great Patham, the captain thought, shocked. He'd lost count of the days!
 Or was it weeks?
 He went in to find Toll.
 "It's been a wonderful visit," he said, "but I'll have to be leaving, I guess. Tomorrow morning, early--"
 Toll put some fancy sewing she was working on back in a glass basket, laid her thin, strong witch's hands in her lap, and smiled up at him.
 "We thought you'd be thinking that," she said, "and so we--You know, captain, it was quite difficult to find a way to reward you for bringing back the children?"
 "It was?" said the captain, suddenly realizing he'd also clean forgotten he was broke! And now the wrath of Onswud lay close ahead.
 "Gold and jewel stones would have been just right, of course!" she said, "but unfortunately, while there's no doubt a lot of it on Karres somewhere, we never got around to looking for it. And we haven't money-none that you could use, that is!"
 "No, I don't suppose you do," the captain agreed sadly.
 "However," said Toll, "we've all been talking about it in the town, and so we've loaded a lot of things aboard your ship that we think you can sell at a fine profit!"
 "Well now," the captain said gratefully, "that's fine of--"
 "There are furs," said Toll, "the very finest furs we could fix up--two thousand of them!"
 "Oh!" said the captain, bravely keeping his smile. "Well, that's wonderful!"
 "And essences of perfume!" said Toll. "Everyone brought one bottle of their own, so that's eight thousand three hundred and twenty-three bottles of perfume essences--all different!"
 "Perfume!" said the captain. "Fine, fine--but you really shouldn't--"
 "And the rest of it," Toll concluded happily, "is the green Lepti liquor you like so much, and the Wintenberry jellies!" She frowned. "I forgot just how many jugs and jars," she admitted, "but there were a lot. It's all loaded now. And do you think you'll be able to sell all that?" she smiled.
 "I certainly can!" the captain said stoutly. "It's wonderful stuff, and there's nothing like it in the Empire."
 Which was very true. They wouldn't have considered miffel-furs for lining on Karres. But if he'd been alone he would have felt like he wanted to burst into tears.
 The witches couldn't have picked more completely unsalable items if they'd tried! Furs, cosmetics, food and liquor--he'd be shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchandise into the Empire. For the same reason that they couldn't use it on Nikkeldepain--they were that scared of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!
 He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside his plate, which explained in a large, not too legible script that she had to run off and fetch the Leewit; and that if he was gone before she got back she was wishing him good-by and good luck.
 He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on Karres. He wondered how Toll kept that sleek figure.
 Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir, and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained Maleen hurled herself into his arms.
 "Oh, captain!" she sobbed. "You're leaving--"
 "Now, now!" the captain murmured, touched and surprised by the lovely child's grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly. "I'll be back," he said rashly.
 "Oh, yes, do come back!" cried Maleen. She hesitated and added: "I become marriageable two years from now. Karres time--"
 "Well, well," said the captain, dazed. "Well, now--"
 He set off down the path a few minutes later, with a strange melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow-motion fountain of gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large, vari-hued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath, with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.
 As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.
 "Well, Ugly," she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, "who you staling at?" Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips.
 Toll up-ended her promptly and smacked the Leewit's bottom.
 "She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you," she explained hurriedly. "Perhaps you'd better get out of range while I can keep her head under. And good luck, captain!"
 Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course, it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up--it could have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.
 Somewhere in the distance, somebody tootled on a wood-instrument, very gently.
 He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field, when something buzzed past him like an enormous wasp and went CLUNK! into the bole of a tree just before him.
 It was a long, thin, wicked-looking arrow. On its shaft was a white card; and on the card was printed in red letters: STOP, MAN OF NIKKELDEPAIN! 
 The captain stopped and looked around slowly and cautiously. There was no one in sight. What did it mean?
 He had a sudden feeling as if all of Karres were rising up silently in one stupendous, cool, foggy trap about him. His skin began to crawl. What was going to happen?
 "Ha-ha!" said Goth, suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to his left and eight feet above him. "You did stop!"
 The captain let his breath out slowly.
 "What else did you think I'd do?" he inquired. He felt a little faint.
 She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. "Wanted to say good-by!" she told him.
 Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-green rock-lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiverful of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder, and some arrow-shooting gadget--not a bow--in her left hand.
 She followed his glance.
 "Bollem hunting up the mountain," she explained. "The wild ones. They're better meat--"
 The captain reflected a moment. That's right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He'd learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right!
 "Well," he said, "good-by, Goth!"
 They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres, he decided--more so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn't actually learned a single thing about any of them.
 Peculiar people!
 He walked on, rather glumly.
 "Captain!" Goth called after him. He turned. "Better watch those take-offs," Goth called, "or you'll kill yourself yet!" The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture. And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, I he hoped, no one else. V. 
 There wasn't the remotest possibility, of course, of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they'd loaded for him. But the more he thought about it now, the less likely it seemed that Councilor Onswud was going to let a genuine fortune slip through his hands on a mere technicality of embargoes. Nikkeldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising; and the councilor himself was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned miffel in the Republic.
 More hopefully, the captain began to wonder whether some sort of trade might not be made to develop eventually between Karres and Nikkeldepain. Now and then, he also thought of Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A handful of witch-notes went tinkling through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred. I
 The calendric chronometer informed him he'd spent three weeks there. He couldn't remember how their year compared with the standard one.
 He found he was getting remarkably restless on this homeward run; and it struck him for the first time that space travel could also be nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom. He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small-talk with Illyla, via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.
 The ship seemed unnaturally quiet now--that was the trouble! The captain's cabin, particularly, and the hall leading past it had become as dismal as a tomb.
 But at long last, Nikkeldepain II swam up on the screen ahead. The captain put the Venture 7333 on orbit, and broadcast the ship's identification number. Half an hour later, Landing Control called him. He repeated the identification number, and added the ship's name, his name, owner's name, place of origin and nature of cargo.
 The cargo had to be described in detail.
 "Assume Landing Orbit 21,203 on your instruments," Landing Control instructed him. "A customs ship will come out to inspect."
 He went on the assigned orbit and gazed moodily from the vision ports at the flat continents and oceans of Nikkeldepain II as they drifted by below. A sense of equally flat depression overcame him unexpectedly. He shook it off and remembered Illyla.
 Three hours later, a ship ran up next to him; and he shut off the orbital drive. The communicator began buzzing. He switched it on.
 "Vision, please!" said an official-sounding voice. The captain frowned, located the vision-stud of the communicator screen and pushed it down. Four faces appeared in vague outline on the screen, looking at him.
 "Illyla!" the captain said.
 "At least," young Councilor Rapport said unpleasantly, "he's brought back the ship, Father Onswud!"
 "Illyla!" said the captain.
 Councilor Onswud said nothing. Neither did Illyla. They both seemed to be staring at him, but the screen wasn't good enough to permit the study of expression in detail.
 The fourth face, an unfamiliar one above a uniform collar, was the one with the official-sounding voice.
 "You are instructed to open the forward lock, Captain Pausert," it said, "for an official investigation."
 It wasn't till he was releasing the outer lock to the control room that the captain realized it wasn't Customs who had sent a boat out to him, but the police of the Republic.
 However, he hesitated for only a moment. Then the outer lock gaped wide.
 He tried to explain. They wouldn't listen. They had come on board in contamination-proof repulsor suits, all four of them; and they discussed the captain as if he weren't there. Illyla looked pale and angry and beautiful, and avoided looking at him.
 However, he didn't want to speak to her before the others anyway.
 They strolled back to the storage and gave the Karres cargo a casual glance.
 "Damaged his lifeboat, too!" Councilor Rapport remarked.
 They brushed past him down the narrow hallway and went back to the control room. The policeman asked to see the log and commercial records. The captain produced them.
 The three men studied them briefly. Illyla gazed stonily out at Nikkeldepain II.
 "Not too carefully kept!" the policeman pointed out.
 "Surprising he bothered to keep them at all!" said Councilor Rapport.
 "But it's all clear enough!" said Councilor Onswud.
 They straightened up then and faced him in a line. Councilor Onswud folded his arms and projected his craggy chin. Councilor Rapport stood at ease, smiling faintly. The policeman became officially rigid. Illyla remained off to one side, looking at the three.
 "Captain Pausert," the policeman said, "the following charges--substantiated in part by this preliminary investigation--are made against you--"
 "Charges?" said the captain.
 "Silence, please!" rumbled Councilor Onswud.
 "First: material theft of a quarter-million value of maels of jewels and jeweled items from a citizen of the Imperial Planet of Porlumma--"
 "They were returned!" the captain protested.
 "Restitution, particularly when inspired by fear of retribution, does not affect the validity of the original charge," Councilor Rapport quoted, gazing at the ceiling.
 "Second," continued the policeman. "Purchase of human slaves, permitted under Imperial law but prohibited by penalty of ten years to lifetime penal servitude by the laws of the Republic of Nikkeldepain--"
 "I was just taking them back where they belonged!" said the captain.
 "We shall get to that point presently," the policeman replied. "Third, material theft of sundry items in the value of one hundred and eighty thousand maels from a ship of the Imperial Planet of Lepper, accompanied by threats of violence to the ship's personnel--"
 "I might add in explanation of the significance of this particular charge," added Councilor Rapport, looking at the floor, "that the Regency of Sirius, containing Lepper, is allied to the Republic of Nikkeldepain by commercial and military treaties of considerable value. The Regency has taken the trouble to point out that such hostile conduct by a citizen of the Republic against citizens of the Regency is likely to have an adverse effect on the duration of the treaties. The charge thereby becomes compounded by the additional charge of a treasonable act against the Republic--"
 He glanced at the captain. "I believe we can forestall the accused's plea that these pilfered goods also were restored. They were, in the face of superior force!"
 "Fourth," the policeman went on patiently, "depraved and licentious conduct while acting as commercial agent, to the detriment of your employer's business and reputation--"
 "WHAT?" choked the captain.
 "--involving three of the notorious Witches of the Prohibited Planet of Karres--"
 "Just like his great-uncle Threbus!" nodded Councilor Onswud gloomily. "It's in the blood, I always say!"
 "--and a justifiable suspicion of a prolonged stay on said Prohibited Planet of Karres--"
 "I never heard of that place before this trip!" shouted the captain.
 "Why don't you read your Instructions and Regulations then?" shouted Councilor Rapport. "It's all there!"
 "Silence, please!" shouted Councilor Onswud.
 "Fifth," said the policeman quietly, "general willful and negligent actions resulting in material damage and loss to your employer to the value of eighty-two thousand maels."
 "I've still got fifty-five thousand. And the stuff in the storage," the captain said, also quietly, "is worth half a million, at least!"
 "Contraband and hence legally valueless!" the policeman said. Councilor Onswud cleared his throat.
 "It will be impounded, of course," he said. "Should a method of resale present itself, the profits, if any, will be applied to the cancellation of your just debts. To some extent, that might reduce your sentence." He paused. "There is another matter--"
 "The sixth charge," the policeman said, "is the development ad public demonstration of a new type of space drive, which should have been brought promptly and secretly to the attention of the Republic of Nikkeldepain!"
 They all stared at him--alertly and quite greedily.
 So that was it--the Sheewash Drive!
 "Your sentence may be greatly reduced, Pausert," Councilor Onswud said wheedlingly, "if you decide to be reasonable now. What have you discovered?"
 "Look out, father!" Illyla said sharply.
 "Pausert," Councilor Onswud inquired in a fading voice, "what is that in your hand?"
 "A Blythe gun," the captain said, boiling.
 There was a frozen stillness for an instant. Then the policeman's right hand made a convulsive movement.
 "Uh-uh!" said the captain warningly.
 Councilor Rapport started a slow step backwards.
 "Stay where you are!" said the captain.
 "Pausert!" Councilor Onswud and Illyla cried out together.
 "Shut up!" said the captain.
 There was another stillness.
 "If you'd looked," the captain said, in an almost normal voice, "you'd have seen I've got the nova gun turrets out. They're fixed on that boat of yours. The boat's lying still and keeping its little yap shut. You do the same--"
 He pointed a finger at the policeman. "You got a repulsor suit on," he said. "Open the inner port lock and go squirt yourself back to your boat!"
 The inner port lock groaned open. Warm air left the ship in a long, lay wave, scattering the sheets of the Venture's log and commercial records over the floor. The thin, cold upper atmosphere of Nikkeldepain II came eddying in.
 "You next, Onswud!" the captain said.
 And a moment later: "Rapport, you just turn around--"
 Young Councilor Rapport went through the port at a higher velocity than could be attributed reasonably to his repulsor units. The captain winced and rubbed his foot. But it had been worth it.
 "Pausert," said Illyla in justifiable apprehension, "you are stark, staring mad!"
 "Not at all, my dear," the captain said cheerfully. "You and I are now going to take off and embark on a life of crime together."
 "But, Pausert--"
 "You'll get used to it," the captain assured her, "just like I did. It's got Nikkeldepain beat every which way."
 "Pausert," Illyla said, whitefaced, "we told them to bring up revolt ships!"
 "We'll blow them out through the stratosphere," the captain said belligerently, reaching for the port-control switch. He added, "But they won't shoot anyway while I've got you on board!"
 Illyla shook her head. "You just don't understand," she said desperately. "You can't make me stay!"
 "Why not?" asked the captain.
 "Pausert," said Illyla, "I am Madame Councilor Rapport."
 "Oh!" said the captain. There was a silence. He added, crestfallen: "Since when?"
 "Five months ago, yesterday," said Illyla.
 "Great Patham!" cried the captain, with some indignation. "I'd hardly got off Nikkeldepain then! We were engaged!"
 "Secretly ... and I guess," said Illyla, with a return of spirit, "that I had a right to change my mind!"
 There was another silence.
 "Guess you had, at that," the captain agreed. "All right--the port's still open, and your husband's waiting in the boat. Beat it!"
 He was alone. He let the ports slam shut and banged down the oxygen release switch. The air had become a little thin.
 He cussed.
 The communicator began rattling for attention. He turned it on.
 "Pausert!" Councilor Onswud was calling in a friendly but shaking voice. "May we not depart, Pausert? Your nova guns are still fixed on this boat!"
 "Oh, that--" said the captain. He deflected the turrets a trifle. "They won't go off now. Scram!"
 The police boat vanished.
 There was other company coming, though. Far below him but climbing steadily, a trio of revolt ships darted past on the screen, swung around and came back for the next turn of their spiral. They'd have to get a good deal closer before they started shooting; but they'd try to stay under him so as not to knock any stray chunks out of Nikkeldepain.
 He sat a moment, reflecting. The revolt ships went by once more. The captain punched in the Venture's secondary drives, turned her nose towards the planet and let her go. There were some scattered white puffs around as he cut through the revolt ships' plane of flight. Then he was below them, and the Venture groaned as he took her out of the dive.
 The revolt ships were already scattering and nosing over for a countermaneuver. He picked the nearest one and swung the nova guns towards it.
 "--and ram them in the middle!" he muttered between his teeth.
 tSSS-whoosh!
 It was the Sheewash Drive--but, like a nightmare now, it kept on and on! VI. 
 "Maleen!" the captain bawled, pounding at the locked door of the captain's cabin. "Maleen--shut it off! Cut it off! You'll kill yourself. Maleen!"
 The Venture quivered suddenly throughout her length, then shuddered more violently, jumped and coughed; and commenced sailing along on her secondary drives again. He wondered how many light-years from everything they were by now. It didn't matter!
 "Maleen!" he yelled. "Are you all right?"
 There was a faint thump-thump inside the cabin, and silence. He lost almost a minute finding the right cutting tool in the storage. A few seconds later, a section of door panel sagged inwards; he caught it by one edge and came tumbling into the cabin with it.
 He had the briefest glimpse of a ball of orange-colored fire swirling uncertainly over a cone of oddly bent wires. Then the fire vanished, and the wires collapsed with a loose rattling to the table top.
 The crumpled small shape lay behind the table, which was why he didn't discover it at once. He sagged to the floor beside it, all the strength running out of his knees.
 Brown eyes opened and blinked at him blearily.
 "Sure takes it out of you!" Goth grunted. "Am I hungry!"
 "I'll whale the holy, howling tar out of you again," the captain roared, "if you ever--"
 "Quit your bawling!" snarled Goth. "I got to eat."
 She ate for fifteen minutes straight, before she sank back in her chair, and sighed.
 "Have some more Wintenberry jelly," the captain offered anxiously. She looked pretty pale.
 Goth shook her head. "Couldn't--and that's about the first thing you've said since you fell through the door, howling for Maleen. Ha-ha! Maleen's got a boy friend!"
 "Button your lip, child," the captain said. "I was thinking." He added, after a moment: "Has she really?"
 "Picked him out last year," Goth nodded. "Nice boy from town--they get married as soon as she's marriageable. She just told you to come back because she was upset about you. Maleen had a premonition you were headed for awful trouble!"
 "She was quite right, little chum," the captain said nastily.
 "What were you thinking about?" Goth inquired.
 "I was thinking," said the captain, "that as soon as we're sure you're going to be all right, I'm taking you straight back to Karres!"
 "I'll be all right now," Goth said. "Except, likely, for a stomach-ache. But you can't take me back to Karres."
 "Who will stop me, may I ask?" the captain asked.
 "Karres is gone," Goth said.
 "Gone?" the captain repeated blankly, with a sensation of not quite definable horror bubbling up in him.
 "Not blown up or anything," Goth reassured him. "They just moved it! The Imperialists got their hair up about us again. But this time, they were sending a fleet with the big bombs and stuff, so everybody was called home. But they had to wait then till they found out where we were--me and Maleen and the Leewit. Then you brought us in; and they had to wait again, and decide about you. But right after you'd left ... we'd left, I mean ... they moved it."
 "Where?"
 "Great Patham!" Goth shrugged. "How'd I know? There's lots of places!"
 There probably were, the captain admitted silently. A scene came suddenly before his eyes--that lime-white, arenalike bowl in the valley, with the steep tiers of seats around it, just before they'd reached the town of Karres--"the Theater where--" I
 But now there was unnatural night-darkness all over and about that world; and the eight thousand-some Witches of Karres sat in circles around the Theater, their heads bent towards one point in the center, where orange fire washed hugely about the peak of a cone of curiously twisted girders.
 And a world went racing off at the speeds of the Sheewash Drive! There'd be lots of places, all right. What peculiar people!
 "Anyway," he sighed, "if I've got to start raising you--don't say 'Great Patham' any more. That's a cuss word!"
 "I learned it from you!" Goth pointed out.
 "So you did, I guess," the captain acknowledged. "I won't say it either. Aren't they going to be worried about you?"
 "Not very much," said Goth. "We don't get hurt often--especially when we're young. That's when we can do all that stuff like teleporting, and whistling, like the Leewit. We lose it mostly when we get older-they're working on that now so we won't. About all Maleen can do right now is premote!"
 "She premotes just dandy, though," the captain said. "The Sheewash Drive--they can all do that, can't they?"
 "Uh-huh!" Goth nodded. "But that's learned stuff. That's one of the things they already studied out." She added, a trace uncomfortably: "I can't tell you about that till you're one yourself."
 "Till I'm what myself?'j the captain asked, becoming puzzled again.
 "A witch, like us," said Goth. "We got our rules. And that won't be for four years, Karres time."
 "It won't, eh?" said the captain. "What happens then?"
 "That's when I'm marriageable age," said Goth, frowning at the jar of Wintenberry jelly. She pulled it towards her and inspected it carefully. "I got it all fixed," she told the jelly firmly, "as soon as they started saying they ought to pick out a wife for you on Karres, so you could stay. I said it was me, right away; and everyone else said finally that was all right then--even Maleen, because she had this boy friend."
 "You mean," said the captain, stunned, "this was all planned out on Karres?"
 "Sure," said Goth. She pushed the jelly back where it had been standing, and glanced up at him again. "For three weeks, that's about all everyone talked about in the town! It set a perceedent--"
 She paused doubtfully.
 "That would explain it," the captain admitted.
 "Uh-huh," Goth nodded relieved, settling back in her chair. "But it was my father who told us how to do it so you'd break up with the people on Nikkeldepain. He said it was in the blood."
 "What was in the blood?" the captain said patiently.
 "That you'd break up with them. That's Threbus, my father," Goth informed him. "You met him a couple of times in the town. Big man with a blond beard--Maleen and the Leewit take after him."
 "You wouldn't mean my great-uncle Threbus?" the captain inquired. He was in a state of strange calm by now.
 "That's right," said Goth. "He liked you a lot."
 "It's a small Galaxy," said the captain philosophically. "So that's where Threbus wound up! I'd like to meet him again some day."
 "We'll start after Karres four years from now, when you learn about those things," Goth said. "We'll catch up with them all right. That's still thirteen hundred and seventy-two Old Sidereal days," she added, "but there's a lot to do in between. You want to pay the money you owe back to those people, don't you? I got some ideas--"
 "None of those teleporting tricks now!" the captain warned.
 "Kid stuff!" Goth said scornfully. "I'm growing up. This'll be fair swapping. But we'll get rich."
 "I wouldn't be surprised," the captain admitted. He thought a moment. "Seeing we've turned out to be distant relatives, I suppose it is all right, too, if I adopt you meanwhile--"
 "Sure," said Goth. She stood up.
 "Where you going?" the captain asked.
 "Bed," said Goth. "I'm tired." She stopped at the hall door. "About all I can tell you about us till then," she said, "you can read in those Regulations, like the one man said--the one you kicked o ff the ship. There's a lot about us in there. Lots of lies, too, though!"
 "And when did you find out about the communicator between here and the captain's cabin?" the captain inquired.
 Goth grinned. "A while back," she admitted. "The others never noticed!"
 "All right," the captain said. "Good night, witch--if you get a stomachache, yell and I'll bring the medicine."
 "Good night," Goth yawned. "I will, I think."
 "And wash behind your ears!" the captain added, trying to remember the bedtime instructions he'd overheard Maleen giving the junior witches.
 "All right," said Goth sleepily. The hall door closed behind her--but half a minute later, it was briskly opened again. The captain looked up startled from the voluminous stack of "General Instructions and Space Regulations of the Republic of Nikkeldepain" he'd just discovered in one of the drawers of the control desk. Goth stood in the doorway, scowling and wide-awake.
 "And you wash behind yours!" she said.
 "Huh?" said the captain. He reflected a moment. "All right," he said. "We both will, then."
 "Right," said Goth, satisfied.
 The door closed once more.
 The captain began to run his finger down the lengthy index of K's-or could it be under W?