etimes downright charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors--would have broken him long ago. But that
same hard experience had honed rather than blunted the edge of his
imagination, and the prospect of a close-quarters stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was anything but attractive.

"You two did the field work on the last location," he said. "It's high
time I took my turn--and God knows I'd go mad if I had to stay inship
and listen to Lee memorizing his Handbook subsections or to Gib
practicing dead languages with Xavier."

Stryker laughed for the first time since the explosion that had so
nearly wrecked the _Marco Four_.

"Good enough. Though it wouldn't be more diverting to listen for hours
to you improvising enharmonic variations on the _Lament for Old Terra_
with your accordion."

Gibson, characteristically, had a refinement to offer.

"They'll be alerted down there for a reconnaissance sally," he said.
"Why not let Xavier take the scouter down for overt diversion, and drop
Arthur off in the helihopper for a low-level check?"

Stryker looked at Farrell. "All right, Arthur?"

"Good enough," Farrell said. And to Xavier, who had not moved from his
post at the magnoscanner: "How does it look, Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"

The mechanical answered him in a voice as smooth and clear--and as
inflectionless--as a 'cello note. "The planet seems uninhabited except
for a large island some three hundred miles in diameter. There are
twenty-seven small agrarian hamlets surrounded by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a thousand buildings with a central square.
In the square rests a grounded spaceship of approximately ten times the
bulk of the _Marco Four_."

They crowded about the vision screen, jostling Xavier's jointed gray
shape in their interest. The central city lay in minutest detail before
them, the battered hulk of the grounded ship glinting rustily in the
late afternoon sunlight. Streets radiated away from the square in
orderly succession, the whole so clearly depicted that they could see
the throngs of people surging up and down, tiny foreshortened faces
turned toward the sky.

"At least they're human," Farrell said. Relief replaced in some measure
his earlier uneasiness. "Which means that they're Terran, and can be
dealt with according to Reclamations routine. Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"

Xavier's mellow drone assumed the convention vibrato that