Until the crash of time?_

"_What hand has shaped so cruelly?
What whim has cast such fate?
Where is, in our creation,
The botch that makes us great?_"

"Oh, that's good, darling! That's very good. I'm proud of you, David."

"I think it stinks," he said evenly, "but, anyway, there are two more
verses."

"_David!_"

Grimly, he spat out the last eight lines.

"_Why are we ever gimleted
By empire's irony?
Is discontent the cancered price
Of Earthman's galaxy?_"

Leonora, recoiling from his cold fury, was a shaking pair of shoulders
and a mass of lank hair supported by her hands on her face while she
sobbed.

"_Are our souls so much perverted?
Can we not relent?
Or are the stars the madman's cost
For his inborn discontent?_

"Good night, Leonora."

VI.

The light flickered on Marlowe's interphone.

"Good morning, Mr. Secretary."

"Good morning, Mary. What's up?"

"Harrison's being deported from Dovenil, sir. There's a civil crime
charged against him. Quite a serious one."

Marlowe's eyebrows went up. "How much have we got on it?"

"Not too much, sir. Harrison's report hasn't come in yet. But the
story's on the news broadcasts now, sir. We haven't been asked to
comment yet, but Emigration has been called by several news outlets, and
the Ministry for Education just called here and inquired whether it
would be all right to publish a general statement of their exchange
students' careful instructions against violating local customs."

Marlowe's glance brooded down on the mass of papers piled in the tray of
his IN box. "Give me a tape of a typical broadcast," he said at last.
"Hold everything else. Present explanation to all news outlets: None
now, statement forthcoming after preliminary investigation later in the
day. The Ministry regrets this incident deeply, and will try to settle
matters as soon and as amicably as possible, et cetera, et cetera.
O.K.?"

"Yes, sir."

He swung his chair around to face the screen let into a side wall, and
colors began to flicker and run in the field almost immediately. They
steadied and sharpened, and the broadcast tape began to roll.

Dateline: Dovenil, Sector Three, Day 183, 2417 GST. Your Topical
News reporter on this small planet at the Union's rim was unable
today to locate for comment any of the high officials of this alien
civilization directly concerned with the order for the deportation