below the crest of the
mountain, circling slowly above the plain. Hundreds, no, over a
thousand, of them; two- and three-and five-hundred-footers, and here
and there a thousand-footer that could have been converted into a
hypership if anybody had wanted to take the trouble. The view changed
again; this time from an aircar dropped from the ship, he supposed; it
was down almost to the tops of the ships, and he could read names and
home ports: _Pixie_, Chloris; _Helen O'Loy_, Anaitis. They were from
Jurgen. _Sky-Rover_, Port Saunders; she was from Horvendile. Ships
from Storisende, and Yellowmarsh on Janicot, and....

"Now we know where they all went."

It was logical, of course. Most of the hyperships used in the
evacuation had been built here. It had been less trouble to lead the
troops and the civilian workers from Poictesme and the other planets
onto small normal-space ships and bring them here than to take the big
ships away on short interplanetary runs to the other planets.

"Have you screened my father yet?"

"Yes. This is going to knock the bottom out of the companies that are
building those ships at Storisende, I'm afraid."

"Their tough luck."

"It could be everybody's tough luck. Both those companies have been
issuing stock, and there's been a lot of speculation in it. This
market's so inflated now that a puncture at one place might blow the
whole thing out."

He knew that. He shrugged. "Father will have to think of something.
Tell him I'll screen him from Sickle Mountain."

Then he went back to his classroom.

"All right, class dismissed," he said. "You have twenty minutes to get
your bags packed. We're going to work for real, now."

Airboats and airships flocked to Sickle Mountain; some of them
hastened back to Port Carpenter for loads of food, for there was none
in the storehouses at the embarkation camp. They inspected ship after
ship, and chose two three-hundred-footers. They sent airships and
freight-scows to the dozen-odd cities and industrial centers that had
been already explored, to gather cargo, as far as possible the items
in shortest supply on Poictesme.

"Don't worry about a market smash," his father told him. "We have that
taken care of. Trisystem Investments has just bought up a lot of stock
in both of those companies, and we've set up agreements with
them--informally, of course; we'll have to get them voted on by our
own companies--to sell them ships from Koshchei. In return, the