The silence grew unnaturally long. Were they waiting for him to say something? Finally Captain Park said, "You've probably guessed we have an impasse here, Apprentice Vinh. You have no vote, no experience, and no detailed knowledge of the situation. Without meaning to offend you, I must say that I am embarrassed to have you at this meeting at all. But you are the only crewmember owner for two of our ships. If you have any advice to give with regard to our options, we would be...happy...to hear it."

Apprentice Ezr Vinh might be a small playing piece, but he was the center of attention just now, and what did he have to say for himself? A million questions swirled up in his mind. At school they had practiced quick decisions, but even there he had been given more backgrounding than this. Of course, these people weren't much interested in real analysis from him. The thought nettled, almost broke him out of his frozen panic. "F-four possibilities, Fleet Captain? Are there a-any lesser ones that didn't make it to this briefing?"

"None that had any support from myself or the Committee."

"Um. You have spoken with the Emergents more than anyone. What do you think of their leader, this Tomas Nau?" It was just the sort of question he and Trixia had wondered about. Ezr never imagined that he would be asking the Fleet Captain himself.

Park's lips tightened, and for an instant Ezr thought he would blow up. Then he nodded. "He's bright. His technical background appears weak compared to a Qeng Ho Fleet Captain's. He's a deep student of the Strategies, though not necessarily the same ones we know... The rest is guess and intuition, though I think most Committee members agree: I would not trust Tomas Nau with any mercantile agreement. I think he would commit a great treachery if it would make him even a small profit. He is very smooth, a consummate liar who puts not the faintest value on return business." All in all, that was about the most damning statement a Qeng Ho could make about another living being. Ezr suddenly guessed that Captain Park must be one of the supporters of sneak attack. He looked at Sum Dotran and then back to Park. The two he would trust the most were off the end of the map, in opposite directions! Lord, don't you people know I'm just an apprentice!

Ezr stepped on the internal whine. He hesitated for seconds, truly thinking on the issue. Then, "Given your assessment, sir, I certainly oppose the first possibility, joint operations. But...I also oppose the idea of a sneak attack since-"

"Excellent decision, my boy," interrupted Sum Dotran.

"-since that is something we Qeng Ho have little practice in, no matter how much we've studied it."

That left two possibilities: cut and run-or stay, cooperate minimally with the Emergents, and tip off the Spiders at the first opportunity. Even if objectively justified, retreat would mark their expedition an abject failure. Considering their fuel state, it would also be extraordinarily slow.

Just over a million kilometers away was the greatest mystery-possible-treasure known to this part of Human Space. They had come across fifty light-years to get this tantalizingly close. Great risks, great treasure. "Sir, it would be giving up too much to leave now. But we must all be like armsmen now, until things are clearly safe." After all, the Qeng Ho had its own warrior legends: Pham Nuwen had won his share of battles. "I-I recommend that we stay."

Silence. Ezr thought he saw relief on most faces. Deputy Fleet Captain Lisolet just looked grim. Sum Dotran was not so reserved: "My boy, please. Reconsider. Your Family has two starships at risk here. It is no disgrace to fall back before the likely loss of all. Instead, it is wisdom. The Emergents are simply too dangerous to-"

Park drifted up from his place at the table, his beefy hand reaching out. The hand descended gently on Sum Dotran's shoulder, and Park's voice was soft. "I'm sorry, Sum. You did all you could. You even got us to listen to a junior owner. Now it's time...for all of us...to agree and proceed."

Dotran's face contorted in a look of frustration or fear. He held it for a moment of quivering concentration, then let his breath whistle out of his mouth. He suddenly seemed very old and tired. "Quite so, Captain."

Park slipped back to his place at the table and gave Ezr an impassive look. "Thank you for your advice, Apprentice Vinh. I expect you to honor the confidentiality of this meeting."

"Yessir." Ezr braced.

"Dismissed."

The door opened behind him. Ezr pushed off the bracing pole. As he glided through the doorway, Captain Park was already talking to the Committee. "Kira, think about putting ordnance on all the pinnaces. Perhaps we can tip the Emergents that cooperating vessels will be very dangerous to hijack. I-"

The door slid shut over the rest. Ezr was overcome with relief and the shakes all at the same time. Maybe forty years ahead of his time, he had actually participated in a fleet decision. It had not been fun.

THREE.

The Spider world-Arachna, some were calling it now-was twelve thousand kilometers in diameter, with 0.95-gee surface gravity. The planet had a stony, undifferentiated interior, but the surface was swaddled with enough volatiles for oceans and a friendly atmosphere. Only one thing prevented this from being an Earth-like Eden of a world: the absence of sunlight.

It was more than two hundred years since the OnOff star, this world's sun, had entered its "Off" state. For more than two hundred years, its light upon Arachna had been scarcely brighter than that from the far stars.

Ezr's landing craft arced down across what would be a major archipelago during warmer times. The main event was on the other side of the world, where the heavy-lifter crews were carving and raising a few million tonnes of seamount and frozen ocean. No matter; Ezr had seen large-scale engineering before. This smaller landing could be the history maker...

The consensus imagery on the passenger deck was a natural view. The lands streaming silently past below were shades of gray, patches of white sometimes faintly glistening. Maybe it was just a trick of the imagination, but Ezr thought he could see faint shadows cast by OnOff. They conjured a topography of crags and mountain peaks, whiteness sliding off into dark pits. He thought he could see concentric arcs outlining some of the farther peaks: pressure ridges where the ocean froze around the rock?

"Hey, at least put an altimeter grid on it." Benny Wen's voice came from over his shoulder, and a faint reddish mesh overlaid the landscape. The grid pretty much matched his intuition about shadows and snow.

Ezr waved away the red tracery. "When the star is On, there's millions of Spiders down there. You'd think there'd be some sign of civilization."

Benny snickered. "What do you expect to see with a natural view? Most of what is sticking up is mountaintops. And farther down is covered by meters of oxy-nitrogen snow." A full terrestrial atmosphere froze down to about ten meters of airsnow-if it was evenly distributed. Many of the most likely city sites-harbors, river joins-were under dozens of meters of the cold stuff. All their previous landings had been relatively high up, in what were probably mining towns or primitive settlements. It wasn't until just before the Emergents arrived that their current destination had been properly understood.

The dark lands marched on below. There were even things like glacier streams. Ezr wondered how they had time to form. Maybe they were air-ice glaciers?

"Lord of All Trade, will you look at that!" Benny pointed off to the left: a reddish glow near the horizon. Benny did a zoom. The light was still small, sliding quickly out of their field of view. It really did look like a fire, though it changed shape rather slowly. Something was blocking the view now, and Ezr had the brief impression of opacity rising skyward from the light. "I've got a better view from high orbit," came a voice from farther down the aisle, Crewleader Diem. He did not forward the picture. "It's a volcano. It just lit off."

Ezr followed the image as it fell behind their point of view. The rising darkness, that must be a geyser of lava-or perhaps just air and water-spewing into the spaces above it. "That's a first," said Ezr. The planet's core was cold and dead, though there were several magma melts in what passed for a mantle. "Everyone seems so sure that the Spiders are all in corpsicle state; what if some of them are actually keeping warm near things like that?"

"Not likely. We've done really detailed IR surveys. We could spot any settlements around a hot spot. Besides, the Spiders just invented radio before this latest dark. They're in no position to be crawling around out-of-doors just yet."

This conclusion was based on a few Msecs of recon and some plausible life-chemistry assumptions. "I guess." He watched the reddish glow until it slipped beyond the horizon. Then there were more exciting things directly below and ahead. Their landing ellipse carried them smoothly downward, still weightless. This was a full-sized world, but there would be no flying around in atmosphere. They were moving at eight thousand meters per second, just a couple of thousand meters above the ground. He had an impression of mountains climbing toward them, reaching out. Ridgeline after ridgeline whipped past, nearer and nearer. Behind him, Benny was making little uncomfortable noises, his usual chitchat temporarily interrupted. Ezr gasped as the last ridgeline flashed by them, so close he wondered it didn't clip the lander's dorsum. Talk about the transfer ellipse to hell.

Then the main jet flared ahead of them.

It took them almost 30Ksec to climb down from the point that Jimmy Diem had selected for the lander. The inconvenience was not frivolous. Their perch was partway up a mountainside but quite free of ice and airsnow. Their goal was at the bottom of a narrow valley. By rights, the valley floor should have been under a hundred meters of airsnow. By some unexpected fluke of topography and climate, there was less than half a meter. And almost hidden beneath the overhang of the valley walls was the largest collection of intact buildings they had found so far. Chances were good that this was an entrance to one of the Spiders' largest hibernation caves, and perhaps a city during OnOff's warm time. Whatever was learned here should be important. Under the joint agreement, it was all being piped back to the Emergents...

Ezr hadn't heard anything about the outcome of the Trading Committee meeting. Diem seemed to be doing everything possible to disguise this visit from the locals, just as the Emergents should expect. Their landing point would be covered with an avalanche shortly after they departed. Even their footprints were to be carefully erased (though that should scarcely be necessary).

By coincidence OnOff was hanging near the zenith when they reached the valley floor. In the "sunny season" this would be high noon. Now, well, the OnOff star looked like some dim reddish moon, half a degree across. The surface was mottled, like oil on a drop of water. Without display amplification, OnOff's light was just bright enough to show their surroundings.

The landing party walked down some kind of central avenue, five suited figures and one come-along walking machine. Tiny puffs of vapor sputtered around their boots when they walked through drifts of airsnow and the volatiles came in contact with the less well insulated fabric of their coveralls. When they stopped for long, it was important not to be in deep snow, else they were quickly surrounded by sublimation mist. Every ten meters, they set down a seismo sensor or a thumper. When they got the whole pattern in place, they would have a good picture of any nearby caverns. More important for this landing, they would have a good idea what lay inside these buildings. Their big goal: written materials, pictures. Finding a children's illustrated reader would mean certain promotion for Diem.

Shades of reddish grays on black. Ezr reveled in the unenhanced imagery. It was beautiful, eerie. This was a place where the Spiders had lived. On either side of their path, the shadows climbed up the walls of Spider buildings. Most were only two or three stories, but even in the dim red light, even with their outline blurred by the snows and the darkness, they could not have been confused with something built by humans. The smallest doorways were generously wide, yet most were less than 150 centimeters high. The windows (carefully shuttered; this place had been abandoned in the methodical way of owners who intended to return) were similarly wide and low.

The windows were like hundreds of slitted eyes looking down on the party of five and their come-along walker. Vinh wondered what would happen if a light came on behind those windows, a crack of light showing between the shutters. His imagination ran with the possibility for a moment. What if their feelings of smug superiority were in error? These were aliens. It was very unlikely life could have originated on a world so bizarre as this; once upon a time they must have had interstellar flight. Qeng Ho's trading territory was four hundred light-years across; they had maintained a continuous technological presence for thousands of years. The Qeng Ho had radio traces of nonhuman civilizations that were thousands-in most cases, millions-of light-years away, forever beyond direct contact or even conversation. The Spiders were only the third nonhuman intelligent race ever physically encountered: three in the eight thousand years of human space travel. One of those had been extinct for millions of years; the other had not achieved machine technology, much less spaceflight.

The five humans, walking between the shadowy buildings with slitted windows, were as close to making human history as Vinh could imagine. Armstrong on Luna, Pham Nuwen at Brisgo Gap-and now Vinh and Wen and Patil and Do and Diem pacing down this street of Spiders.

There was a pause in the background radio traffic, and for a moment the loudest sounds were the creak of his coveralls and his own breathing. Then the tiny voices resumed, directing them across an open space, toward the far end of the valley. Apparently, the analysts thought that narrow cleft might be the entrance to caves, where the local Spiders were presumedly holed up.

"That's odd," came an anonymous voice from on high. "Seismo heard something-is hearing something-from the building next on your right."

Vinh's head snapped up and he peered into the gloom. Maybe not a light, but a sound.

"The walker?"-Diem.

"Maybe it's just the building settling?"-Benny.

"No, no. This was impulsive, like a click Now we're getting a regular beat, some damping. Frequency analysis...sounds like mechanical equipment, moving parts and such... Okay, it's mainly stopped, just some residual ringing. Crewleader Diem, we've got a very good position on this racket. It was on the far corner, four meters up from street level. Here's a guide marker."

Vinh and the others moved forward thirty meters, following the marker glyph that floated in their head-up displays. It was almost funny, the furtiveness of their movements now, even though they would be in plain sight of anyone in the building.

The marker took them around the corner.

"The building doesn't look special," said Diem. Like the others, this appeared to be mortarless stonework, the higher floors slightly outset from the lower. "Wait, I see where you're pointing. There's some kind of...a ceramic box bolted to the second overhang. Vinh, you're closest. Climb up there and take a look."

Ezr started toward the building, then noticed that someone had helpfully killed the marker. "Where?" All he could see were shadows and the grays of stonework.

"Vinh," Diem's voice carried more than its usual snap. "Wake up, huh?"

"Sorry." Ezr felt himself blushing; he got into this sort of trouble far too often. He enabled multispec imagery, and his view burst into color, a composite of what the suit was seeing across several spectral regions. Where there had been a pit of shadow, he now saw the box Diem was talking about. It was mounted a couple of meters above his head. "Just a second; I'll get closer." He walked over to the wall. Like most of the buildings, this one was festooned with wide, stony slats. The analysts thought they were steps. They suited Vinh's purpose, though he used them more like a ladder than like stairs. In a few seconds he was right next to the gadget.

And it was a machine; there were rivets on the sides, like something out of a medieval romance. He pulled a sensor baton from his coveralls and held it near the box. "Do you want me to touch it?"

Diem didn't reply. This was really a question for those higher up. Vinh heard several voices conferring. "Pan around a little. Aren't there markings on the side of that box?" Trixia! He knew she would be one of the watchers, but it was a very pleasant surprise to hear her voice. "Yes, ma'am," he said, and swept the baton back and forth across the box. There was something along the sides; he couldn't tell whether it was writing or an artifact of overly tricky multiscan algorithms. If it was writing, this would be a minor coup.

"Okay, you can fasten the baton to the box now"-another voice, the acoustics fellow. Ezr did as he was told.

Some seconds passed. The Spider stairs were so steep he had to lean back against the risers. Airsnow haze streamed out from the steps, and downward; he could feel his jacket heaters compensating for the chill of the steps' edges.

Then, "That's interesting. This thing is a sensor right out of the dark ages."

"Electrical? Is it reporting to a remote site?" Vinh started. The last words were spoken by a woman with an Emergent accent.

"Ah, Director Reynolt, hello. No, that's the extraordinary thing about this device. It is self-contained. The 'power source' appears to be an array of metal springs. A mechanical clock mechanism-are you familiar with the idea?-provides both timing and motive power. Actually, I suppose this is about the only unsophisticated method that would work over long periods of cold."

"So what all is it observing?" That was Diem, and a good question. Vinh's imagination took off again. Maybe the Spiders were a lot more clever than anyone thought. Maybe his own hooded figure would show up in their recon reports. For that matter, what if this box was hooked up to some kind of weapon?

"We don't see any camera equipment, Crewleader. We have a pretty good image of the box's interior now. A gear mechanism drags a stripchart under four recording styluses." The terms were straight out of a Fallen Civ text. "My guess is, every day or so it advances the strip a little and notes the temperature, pressure...and two other scalars I'm not sure of yet." Every day for more than two hundred years. Human primitives would have had a hard time making a moving-parts mechanism that could work so long, much less do it at low temperatures. "It was our good luck to be walking by when it went off."

There followed a technical dispute about just how sophisticated such recorders might be. Diem had Benny and the others ping the area with picosecond light flashes. Nothing glinted back; no lensed optics were in a line of sight.

Meanwhile, Vinh remained leaning against the stair ramp. The cold was beginning to seep past his jacket and through his full-pressure coveralls. The gear was not designed for extended contact with such a heat sink. He shifted about awkwardly on the narrow steps. In a one-gee field, this sort of acrobatics got old fast... But his new position gave him a view around the corner of the building. And on this side, some of the covering panels had fallen from the windows. Vinh leaned precariously out from the stairs, trying to make sense of what he saw within the room. Everything was covered with a patina of airsnow. Waist-high racks or cabinets were set in long rows. Above them were a metal framework and still more cabinets. Spider stairs connected one level to the other. Of course, to a Spider those cabinets would not be "waist-high." Hmm. There were loose objects piled on top, each a collection of flat plates hinged at one end. Some were folded all together, others were carelessly spread out, like vanity fans.

His sudden understanding was like an electric shock, and he spoke on the public frequency without thinking. "Excuse me, Crewleader Diem?"

The conversation with those above came to a surprised halt.

"What is it, Vinh?" said Diem.

"Take a look through my pov. I think we've found a library."

Somebody up above yelped with pleasure. It really sounded like Trixia.

Thumper analysis would have brought them to the library eventually, but Ezr's find was a significant shortcut.

There was a large door in back; getting the walker in was easy. The walker contained a high-speed scanning manipulator. It took a while for it to adapt to the strange shape of these "books," but now the robot was moving at breakneck speed down the shelves-one or two centimeters per second-two of Diem's crew feeding a steady stream of books into its maw. There was a polite argument audible from on high. This landing was part of the joint plan, all on a negotiated schedule that was to end in just under 100Ksec. In that time they might not be done with this library, much less with the other buildings and the cave entrance. The Emergents didn't want to make an exception for this one landing. Instead, they suggested bringing one of their larger vehicles right to the valley floor and scooping up artifacts en masse.

"And still a lurking strategy can be maintained," came a male Emergent voice. "We can blow out the valley walls, make it look like massive rockfalls destroyed the village at the bottom."

"Hey, these fellows really have the light touch," Benny Wen's voice came into his ear on their private channel. Ezr didn't reply. The Emergent suggestion wasn't exactly irrational, just...foreign. The Qeng Ho traded. The more sadistic of them might enjoy pauperizing the competition, but almost all wanted customers who would look forward to the next fleecing. Simply wrecking or stealing was...gross. And why do it when they could come back again to probe around?

High above, the Emergent proposal was politely rejected and a follow-on mission to this glorious valley was put at the head of the list for future joint adventures.

Diem sent Benny and Ezr Vinh to scout out the shelves. This library might hold one hundred thousand volumes, only a few hundred gigabytes, but that was far too much for the time remaining. Ultimately, they might have to pick and choose, hopefully finding the holy grail of such an operation-a children's illustrated reader.

As the Ksecs passed, Diem rotated his crewmembers between feeding the scanner, bringing books down from the upper stories to be read, and returning books to their original places.

By the time Vinh's meal break came, the OnOff star had swung down from its position near the zenith. Now it hung just above the crags at the far end of the valley and cast shadows from the buildings down the length of the street. He found a snow-free patch of ground, dropped an insulating blanket on it, and took the weight off his feet. Oh, that felt good. Diem had given him fifteen hundred seconds for this break. He fiddled with his feeder, and munched slowly on a couple of fruit bars. He could hear Trixia, but she was very busy. There was still no "children's illustrated reader," but they had found the next best thing, a bunch of physics and chemistry texts. Trixia seemed to think that this was a technical library of some sort. Right now they were debating about speeding up the scan. Trixia thought she had a correct graphemic analysis on the writing, and so now they could switch to smarter reading.

Ezr had known from the moment he'd met Trixia that she was smart. But she was just a Customer specializing in linguistics, a field that Qeng Ho academics excelled in. What could she really contribute? Now...well, he could hear the conversation above. Trixia was constantly deferred to by the other language specialists. Maybe that was not so surprising. The entire Trilander civilization had competed for the limited number of berths on the expedition. Out of five hundred million people, if you chose the best in some specialty...those chosen would be pretty damn good indeed. Vinh's pride in knowing her faltered for an instant: in fact, it was he who was overreaching his station in life by wanting her. Yes, Ezr was a major heir of the Vinh.23 Family, but he himself...wasn't all that bright. Worse, he seemed to spend all his time dreaming about other places and other times.

This discouraging line of thought turned in a familiar direction: Maybe here he would prove that he wasn't so impractical. The Spiders might be a long time from their original civilization. Their present era could be a lot like the Dawn Age. Maybe he would have some insight that would make the fleet's treasure-and earn him Trixia Bonsol. His mind slid off into happy possibilities, never quite descending to gritty detail...

Vinh glanced at his chron. Aha, he still had five hundred seconds! He stood, looked through the lengthening shadows to where the avenue climbed into the side of the mountain. All day, they had concentrated so much on mission priorities that they'd never really gotten to sightsee. In fact, they had stopped just short of a widening in the road, almost a plaza.

During the bright time, there had been plenty of vegetation. The hills were covered with the twisted remains of things that might have been trees. Down here, nature had been carefully trimmed; at regular intervals along the avenue there was the organic rubble of some ornamental plant. A dozen such mounds edged the plaza.

Four hundred seconds. He had time. He walked quickly to the edge of the plaza, then started round it. In the middle of the circle was a little hill, the snow covering odd shapes. When he reached the far side he was looking into the light. The work in the library had heated the place up so much that a fog of temporary, local atmosphere seeped out of the building. It flowed across the street, condensing and settling back to the ground. The light of OnOff shone through it in reddish shafts. Leaving the color aside, it might almost have been ground fog on the main floor of his parents' temp on a summer night. And the valley walls might have been temp partitions. For an instant Vinh was overcome by the image, that a place so alien could suddenly seem familiar, so peaceful.

His attention came back to the center of the plaza. This side was almost free of snow. There were odd shapes ahead, half-hidden by the darkness. Scarcely thinking, he walked toward them. The ground was clear of snow, and it crunched like frozen moss. He stopped, sucked in a breath. The dark things at the center-they were statues. Of Spiders! A few more seconds and he'd report the find, but for the moment he wondered at the scene alone and in silence. Of course, they already knew the natives' approximate form; there had been some crude pictures found by the earlier landings. But-Vinh stepped up the image scan-these were lifelike statues, molded in exquisite detail out of some dark metal. There were three of the creatures, life-sized he guessed. The word "spider" is common language, the sort of term that dissolves to near uselessness in the light of specific examination. In the temps of Ezr's childhood there had been several types of critter called "spiders." Some had six legs, some eight, some ten or twelve. Some were fat and hairy. Some were slender, black, and venomous. These creatures looked a lot like the slender, ten-legged kind. But either they were wearing clothes, or they were spinier than their tiny namesakes. Their legs were wrapped around each other, all reaching for something hidden beneath them. Making war, making love, what? Even Vinh's imagination floundered.

What had it been like here, when last the sun shone bright?

FOUR.

It is an edged cliche that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.

By blind good fortune, Sherkaner Underhill chose the most beautiful days in the years of the Waning for his first trip to Lands Command. He soon realized his good luck was doubled: The winding coastal roads had not been designed for automobiles, and Sherkaner was not nearly so skilled an automobilist as he had thought. More than once he came careening into a hairpin turn with the auto's drive belt improperly applied, and nothing but steering and brakes to keep him from flying into the misty blue of the Great Sea (though no doubt he'd fall short, to the forest below, but still with deadly effect).

Sherkaner loved it. Inside of a few hours he had gotten the hang of operating the machine. Now when he tipped up on two wheels it was almost on purpose. It was a beautiful drive. The locals called this route the Pride of Accord, and the Royal Family had never dared complain. This was the height of a summer. The forest was fully thirty years old, about as old as trees could ever get. They reached straight and high and green, and grew right up to the edge of the highway. The scent of flowers and forest resin drifted cool past his perch on the auto.

He didn't see many other civilian autos. There were plenty of osprechs pulling carts, some trucks, and an inconvenient number of army convoys. The reactions he got from the civilians were a wonderful mix: irritated, amused, envious. Even more than around Princeton, he saw wenches who looked pregnant and guys with dozens of baby welts on their backs. Some of their waves seemed envious of more than Sherk's automobile. And sometimes I'm a little envious of them. For a while, he played with the thought, not trying to rationalize it. Instinct was such a fascinating thing, especially when you saw it from the inside.

The miles passed by. While his body and senses reveled in the drive, the back of Sherkaner's mind was ticking away: grad school, how to sell Lands Command on his scheme, the truly multitudinous ways this automobile could be improved. He pulled into a little forest town late the first afternoon. NIGH'T'DEEPNESS, the antique sign said; Sherkaner wasn't sure if that was a place name or a simple description.

He stopped at the local blacksmith's. The smith had the same odd smile as some of the people on the road. "Nice auto-mobile you have there, mister." Actually it was a very nice and expensive automobile, a brand-new Relmeitch. It was totally beyond the means of the average college student. Sherkaner had won it at an off-campus casino two days earlier. That had been a chancy thing. Sherkaner's aspect was well known at all the gambling houses around Princeton. The owners' guild had told him they'd break every one of his arms if they ever caught him gambling in the city again. Still, he'd been ready to leave Princeton anyway-and he really wanted to experiment with automobiles. The smith sidled around the automobile, pretending to admire the silver trim and the three rotating power cylinders. "So. Kinda far from home, ain'tcha? Whatcha going to do when it stops working?"

"Buy some kerosene?"

"Aha, we got that. Some farm machinery needs it. No, I mean, what about when your contraption breaks? They all do, you know. They're kinda fragile things, not like draft animals."

Sherkaner grinned. He could see the shells of several autos in the forest behind the smith's. This was the right place. "That could be a problem. But you see, I have some ideas. It's leather and metal work that might interest you." He sketched out two of the ideas he'd had that afternoon, things that should be easy to do. The smith was agreeable; always happy to do business with madmen. But Sherkaner had to pay him up front; fortunately, Bank of Princeton currency was acceptable.