broke
clear into the air--a big fish, thick-bodied and shining, looking as
long as Barney's arm in the moonlight--and dropped back with a splash.
Barney grinned twistedly. The NOTES indicated Dr. McAllen had taken
some part in stocking the valley, and one could trust McAllen to see
to it that the presence of his beloved game fish wasn't overlooked
even in so outlandish a project.

He shifted position, became aware of the revolver in his pocket and
brought it out. A wave of dull anger surged slowly through him again.
What they did with trees and animals was their own business. But what
they had done to a human being....

He scrambled suddenly to his feet, drew his arm back, and sent the gun
flying far out over the lake. It spun through the moonlight, dipped,
struck the surface with less of a splash than the fish had made, and
was gone.

Now why, Barney asked himself in amazement, did I do that? He
considered it a moment, and then, for the first time in over a year,
felt a brief touch of something not far from elation.

He wasn't going to die here. No matter how politely the various
invitations to do himself in had been extended by McAllen or the
association, he was going to embarrass them by being alive and healthy
when they came back to the valley four years from now. They wouldn't
kill him then; they'd already shown they didn't have the guts to
commit murder directly. They would have to take him back to Earth.

And once he was there, it was going to be too bad for them. It didn't
matter how closely they watched him; in the end he would find or make
the opportunity to expose them, pull down the whole lousy, conceited
crew, see them buried under the shambles an outraged world would make
of the secret association....

THE END OF YEAR TWO

The end of Year Two on the Ecological Base in the Eighteenth System
arrived and went by without Barney's being immediately aware of the
fact. Some two hours later, he glanced at his wrist watch, pushed back
the chair, got up from the desk and went over to the big grandfather
clock to confirm his surmise.

"Well, well, Brother Chard," he said aloud. "Another anniversary ...
and three of them to go. We're almost at the halfway mark--"

He snapped the cover plate back over the multiple clock faces, and
turned away. Three more years on the Ecological Base was a gruesome
stretch of time when you thought of it as a whole....

Which was precisely why he rarely let himself t