rden world cluttered up with a lot of sick, old men discarded
by Earth.

She turned to the second page of the report. "The original colony
survived for a year. The Sickness in the Old Village developed only
after the first harvest of Rytharian-grown food. It is more and more
evident that the botanical cycle of Rythar must be examined before we
find the answer. To do that adequately, we shall have to send survey
teams to the surface; that requires much larger appropriations for
research than we have had in the past. The metal immunization suits,
which must, of course, be destroyed after each expedition--"

"And what, may I ask, is the meaning of this?"

Mryna dropped the report and swung toward the door. She saw a woman
standing there--another hard-faced Earthwoman, with a starched, white
cap perched on her graying hair.

"I must have come to the wrong room," Mryna said in a small voice.

"Indeed! Everyone knows this is command headquarters. Who are you?" The
woman put her hand on Mryna's arm, and the fingers bit through the
uniform into Mryna's flesh.

Mryna pulled away, drawing her shoulders back proudly. Why should she
feel afraid? She stood a head taller than this dried up stranger; she
knew the Earthwoman's strength would be no match for hers.

"My name is Mryna Brill," she said quietly. "I came up in a god-car from
Rythar."

"Rythar?" The woman's mouth fell open. She whispered the word as if it
were profanity. Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor,
screaming in terror.

_She's afraid of me_! Mryna thought. And that made no sense at all.

Mryna knew she had to get back to the god-car quickly. Since the
Earthmen had built up the taboos in order to get their sacrifice ores
from Rythar, they would do everything they could to prevent her return.
She ran toward an intersecting spoke corridor. An alarm bell began to
clang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed man
sprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. The discharge
burned a deep groove in the wall.

So they would even kill her--these men who pretended to be gods!

Before the man could fire again, Mryna swung down a side corridor, and
at once the sensation of weightlessness overtook her. She could not move
quickly. She saw the armed man at the mouth of the corridor. Frantically
she pushed open the door of a room, which was crowded with consoles of
transmission machines. Three men were seated in front of the sp