"You all right, my lady?"

"Yes. They will stay in the hold?"

"Until we lift and then I'll get them to your cabin if you want."

The handler glanced at the sky. "Ten minutes and we'll be on our way."

Ten minutes-she had timed it well. And another thirty before the handler came puffing to the door of her cabin, his eyes reproachful as he heaved at the suitcases. Locking the door behind him she busied herself with her keys. The lid of one of the cases lifted.

Dumarest was huddled inside.

He was wasted, gaunt, fat and watery tissue burned away during the time he had waited in the woman's apartment after the fight. Hours spent beneath the influence of slow-time, the drug which had increased his metabolism and turned ordinary hours into subjective days. Time for his wounds to heal. Time forhis weight and bulk to diminish-but even so it had been close.

He was naked, the weight of his clothing, boots and knife carried in the other suitcase, the garments mixed with others of a similar nature which were hers. Things bought as the carvings had been to aid the deception.

"Earl!" Gently she eased him from the cramped confines.

"Earl?"

He gasped with the pain of returning circulation. He had been in the case little more than an hour but it had seemed an eternity and, to fit into it at all, muscles had to be strained and joints distorted so as to take advantage of every sc.r.a.p of room.

A trick learned when he'd worked in a carnival from a girl who had been kind. She'd been able to cram her body into a cube little more than a foot on a side and had taken pleasure in teaching him how the body could be bent, turned, the head lowered, the legs folded, the arms wrapped so as to form a compact bundle.

"Earl?"

"I'm all right." He straightened, conscious of her anxiety, breath hissing from between his teeth as he ma.s.saged various points. "How long?"

"We left almost an hour ago. You're safe now."

Safe from what she didn't know and hadn't asked. It had been a matter of mutual need. He had won the money and she'd helped him elude the trap. A gamble on her loyalty and the strength gained in the execution of her art. One almost lost when, at the ramp, that strength had almost failed her.

Now she closed the distance between them, touching his body, her fingers tracing the points of recent wounds. Scars now faded and blending with the rest.

But he was thin! So thin!Gently he moved away from her touch and, guessing his need, she opened the other case and produced his clothing. Dressed he looked more like his normal self but his face held the taut hardness of a skull.

"Earl, you need food."

"Later," said Dumarest. "First we must see the captain."

He joined them where they waited in the salon, a short man with broad shoulders and a face seamed and lined like a dried fruit. His eyes were splinters of amber gla.s.s set beneath bushy brows. His hair was a grizzled cap hugging a peaked skull. His uniform was of fine material, bright with carefully tended insignia. On his left shoulder rode a thing from a nightmare.

A creature like a crab, spined, claws serrated with vicious indentations, an extension like a segmented tail over the rounded shoulders, smaller appendages like miniature hands which served to carry food to the snapping mandibles. The eyes were like jewels set on hornlike promontories.

Captain Lon Tuvey was an unusual man.

"So." He paused in the doorway looking at Sardia then at Dumarest who had helped himself to a cup of basic. "It appears we have a stowaway."

"A pa.s.senger," corrected the woman. "Earl is a pa.s.senger."

"Earl?" His eyes narrowed as she gave the rest of the name.

"Earl Dumarest. No such person is listed on my records. No such person was seen to board the Sivas. No such person has the right to be on my ship." His voice was a drone of mechanical precision. "As far as I'm concerned he is nothing but a stowaway.

Need I tell you the penalty for riding a vessel without permission?"

"I know the penalty," said Dumarest. "But you won't have to evict me. I can pay."

"And if I refuse to carry you?" The amber eyes flickered asDumarest set down the cup. "You recognize my authority?"

"Not if it means going meekly through a port."

"No," said Tuvey. "I didn't think you would. Well, we have no cause to argue, if you have money all is well." He glanced at the woman. "You travel together? As I thought. The price will be double that arranged."

Dumarest said coldly, "I'm not interested in meeting an artist."

"Then you shouldn't be on my ship." Lifting a hand Tuvey drummed his fingernails on the carapace of his pet. "And if you want to argue the matter both the steward and the handler are, at this moment, covering you with lasers."

And somewhere would be the navigator and the engineer with, perhaps, an a.s.sistant or two.

"No," said Dumarest. "I don't want to argue."

"A wise man and your wisdom has bought you a bonus. I shall not return to Juba to discover if you are the man the guards are looking for. The cost and inconvenience wouldn't cover the reward-not when you consider the lost pa.s.sage money." Again his fingers made small drumming sounds as they impacted the sh.e.l.l. Watching, Dumarest saw the segmented tail lift and the spined legs stiffen as if the creature enjoyed the tapping. "It does." Tuvey had guessed the curiosity. Borol appreciates the rhythm. I call him that because he reminds me of an officer I once knew. He fell into a vat of petrifying liquids and he, too, had a hard sh.e.l.l."

Dumarest said dryly, "But not for long."

"No." Tuvey set down the creature which scuttled into a corner to turn and freeze and watch with unblinking eyes.

"You've been riding Low?"

"Yes." A lie but it would serve."And so need building up. Take all the basic you need-it is included in the price." As would be the quick-time they would be given later, the magic of the drug slowing down metabolism as slow-time quickened it. A convenience which shortened the tedium of long journeys. "How did you get aboard?"

"In the trunk." Dumarest met the shrewd amber of the eyes. If Tuvey thought he was lying he gave no sign. "How long will it take us to reach Ath?"

"Does it matter?" The captain smiled as he glanced at Sardia.

"With such a companion what importance has time? Rest, eat, relax and enjoy yourselves. How many have such an opportunity?"

A chance to do as he suggested-but even with normal hours shrunken to apparent seconds, time needed filling. Talk did it, whispers in the darkness as they lay close, memories recounted as they sat in gentle illumination with the pleasure of wine adding to their intimacy.

Sardia spoke of her youth, of the harsh discipline of the Corps Mantage, of artists she had known and now would never see again.

"Amil was the best, Earl. A dancer infused with the flame of genius. A man dedicated to the art. When he was on stage not a whisper could be heard from the audience. On Chrachery, when a man coughed, he was almost killed for what the others chose to regard as an insult. And, when he finally died, the queue to see him lying in state stretched for miles. It took days for them all to pay their last homage and each day fresh blooms are placed on his monument."

"You knew him?"

"He died in my arms." She fell silent, brooding, and he knew better than to break into her mood. Instead he sipped more basic; the fluid sickly with glucose, laced with vitamins, thick with protein. A cupful was the normal ration for a day.

Thoughtfully he studied the woman.Amil had died in her arms and the man had been the hero of a world if what she said was true. Which meant that she, herself, must have achieved a high degree of fame. And, while she lacked the boyishness of a young girl, she was far from old.

"Even so I'm too old," she said when he put the question.

"Nothing is more pathetic than a dancer who clings too long to a fading reputation. I could have used drugs but such things are crutches and being at the top makes you a target for those eager to climb. Then Amil died and Verecunda hurt herself and I decided it was time to make a graceful exit and take up something else." She shook her head, dismissing ghosts. "And you, Earl? What about you?"

"I travel."

"And?" She shook him, her hand warm against his bare shoulder. They had loved and were resting and it was a time for reminiscences. "Your childhood, what about that? And what made you leave home?"

She frowned as he told her, knowing he was skipping, leaving much unsaid and conscious of the gaps. A bleak and harsh childhood, a time of savage necessity with hunger as a constant companion. The need which had set him wandering to find a ship on which he had stowed away. A captain who had been more than kind.

"He could have evicted me," said Dumarest. "Instead, he let me work my pa.s.sage and took care of me as best he could."

A surrogate father who had died to leave the youngster to wander alone. Moving ever deeper into the heart of the galaxy where worlds were close and ships plentiful. To regions where even the name of Earth had been forgotten.

"And now you want to find it," she said. "You want to get back home. But, Earl, are you sure?"

"About the name?" He had recognized her tone. "I'm sure."

"A world of legend," she murmured. "A myth-even the namemakes it unreal. Earth! Why not call it dirt or soil or sand? And you have been searching for it how long?"

Too long, riding High when he could and Low when he couldn't; locked in a casket designed for the transportation of beasts, doped, frozen, ninety percent dead and risking the fifteen percent death rate for the sake of cheap transportation. A bad way to ride, one which robbed the body of fat and excess tissue-no wonder Tuvey had jumped to that conclusion.

"Earl!" Her hand caressed his naked flesh. Already he was filling out, the basic he took together with added ingestors replacing the starved tissues. "Such a hard life."

Had there been no comfort in it at all? No beauty?

Beauty enough, she decided; the vistas of new worlds, the panorama of s.p.a.ce itself, the planetary spectacles which tourists paid highly to see. And there would have been comfort in the form of women if nothing else. His masculinity would have attracted them as a flame attracted moths and they would have flocked to him after his fight in the ring.

She remembered again how he had looked when facing Yhma, the hard savagery of his face, the cruel mouth, the deathly eyes.

Eyes matched by the cold flicker of naked steel, the body a symphony of quick and graceful movement. And then the bursting effort of the finale when, as graceful as a dancer, he had cut and cut again to disarm and release the jetting fountain of a human life. A gushing stream which had lifted the crowd to its feet screaming approbation.

A screaming in which she had joined as her body had trembled and jerked to the fury of o.r.g.a.s.mic release.

Chapter Six.

They landed at sunset when the sky was a vista of entrancing color; swaths of red and orange, blue and umber, green, yellow, azure tinted with shimmers of gold, somber browns illuminated with flecks of puffy whiteness. A splendor due to airborne dusts and aerial microorganisms which caught and reflected the raysof the dying orb.

The town beyond the field matched the beauty of the sky.

Broad terraces surrounded a lake of flowered water, a central fountain casting a perpetual rain. Others set at the edges giving birth to a rainbowed mist. On the terraces, set like jewels on a string, houses merged with greenery and the gentle mask of trees. Spired, turreted, some with cathedral-like soaring arches, others a compact blend of curve and line having the strength and functional beauty of a clenched fist. A mult.i.tude of architectural styles married into a common harmony.

"Ath," said Tuvey. His hand lifted to rap the sh.e.l.l of the pet riding his shoulder. "You like it?"

"It's lovely!" Sardia clutched Dumarest's arm. "So clean! So neat! So much like a... a..."

A child's toy. Dumarest fitted the words to the incompleted sentence as he stood looking at the city. It was too neat, too precise. A normal, living city was never that. It held noise and bustle and a certain untidiness and always a little dirt. A place in which people moved and worked and had their being. This was more like a calculated design; one planned down to the last detail and all offensive or obtrusive intrusions carefully removed.

A construct made by detached planners who cared more for the esthetic appearance than for the comfort of those who had to reside in it.

And yet even that was not wholly true.

"It's like a house," whispered Sardia. "One over which generations have labored so as to get it just right. Or a room furnished and decorated to the exact liking of its owner. It's perfect, Earl. Perfect!"

As a cut and faceted gem, a carving, a mosaic. A thing complete and set for all to admire. An artistic achievement as a single house could be, a single room. But no living city could ever be that."Listen," he said and then, as Sardia, obeying, frowned, he added, "no children. You can't hear any children."

There were green s.p.a.ces and walks and little copses and shelters which childish imagination could turn into jungles and forests and eerie castles. Places which were ripe for mental conversion into haunts of mystery-and yet no shrill voices rose above the susurration of the fountains and nowhere on the terraces could children be seen.

Tuvey shrugged as Sardia questioned him as to their absence.

"Don't ask me. I land, I trade, I leave and what goes on behind city walls is none of my concern. You paid for pa.s.sage and you got it. The journey is all your money bought."

A long journey, too long in the Rift where worlds were close and Dumarest suspected the man of deliberate detours so as to lengthen the time. To make sure he wasn't being followed?

Traders such as the captain often hugged the secret of profitable ports to themselves.

He said dryly, "A correction, Captain. We bought a little more than pa.s.sage."

"An introduction also, I haven't forgotten." Tuvey's fingers rasped over the carapace of his pet. "But that was for the woman. You, Earl, will find other guesting."

"Guesting?"

"You'll see." The captain gestured toward the city. "Here they come."

They were like fireflies, or, no, like clowns, but that was wrong also and Dumarest blinked to clear his mind and eyes of first impressions. Perspective had done it and the neat array of bizarre dwellings. Their owners were the same. Like the buildings, they verged on the edge of fantasy and yet nothing about them was other than decorative or functional. Clothing, oddly cut, oddly draped, still served a purpose. Colors, brilliantly applied, still held a form of logical usage. Lips tinted ochre werestill lips clearly delineated. Hair rippling with shimmering hues was still hair clean and adorning rather than disguising the faces beneath.

"The stage," said Sardia blankly. "They look as if they're all taking part in a play of some kind. A fantasy such as Synthe's Transpadane. I danced in it when young. Earl, this is wonderful!"

For her, yes, because for her it was normal, the life she had once known and had perhaps known better than the later, wasting years. The world of make-believe of which she had been a part when everything was other than what it seemed and all was possible at the touch of imagination's wand. But his universe was of harsher fabric and in it the strange was also the potentially dangerous, and things which were not genuine were always worse than what they appeared.

"Sardia!"

He was too late, already she had gone, running to meet the brilliant cl.u.s.ter coming to greet the new arrivals.

At his side Tuvey said, "Let her go. Later I'll see she meets her artist." Then, oddly, he added, "I wonder what you'll fetch?"

Fetch? A question quickly answered as a dozen bright figures crowded around. One, dressed in dull green slashed with flaming scarlet, feathers on rump and ankles, a crest riding high on his skull, stamped close. With him came the tintinnabulation of tiny bells.

"Captain! Again you honor us. One thousand for the Captain!"

"And a half!" A woman, smooth flesh gleaming naked beneath the slashed vents in her gown, her hair silvered, her lips and nails colored to match, her eyes the color of minted gold, topped the bid.

"Two!" The third voice was deeper, older. "You had him the last time, Myrna.""True." The silvered woman shrugged. "Then two for the other."