uipment:
until now, when his path crossed mine. I found him surrounded by most
of the every-day devices of our modern world. The village of Nareda
was primitive: backward. Save for its modern lights, a few local
audiphones and image-finders, and its official etheric connections
with other world capitals, it might have been a primitive Latin
American village of a hundred years ago.

* * * * *

But not so De Boer's camp, which presently I was to see. Nor this, his
flyer, with which his smuggling activities had puzzled Hanley's Office
for so many months. There was nothing primitive here.

De Boer himself was a swaggering villain. I saw him now with his cloak
discarded, in the normal tube-lights of the control room when, after a
time, the mechanism of invisibility of the flyer was shut off. A
fellow of six feet and a half at the very least, this De Boer. Heavy,
yet with his great height and strength, lean and graceful. He wore a
fabric shirt, with a wide-rolled collar. A wide belt of tanned hide,
with lighters, a little electron drink-cooler and other nick-nackeries
hanging from tasseled cords--and a naked, ugly-looking knife blade
clipped beside a holster which held an old-fashioned exploding
projector of leaden steel-tipped bullets.

His trousers were of leather, wide-flaring, ending at his brawny bare
knees, with wide-cut, limp leather boots flapping about his calves in
ancient piratical fashion. They had flaring soles, these shoes, for
walking upon the Lowland caked ooze. The uppers were useless: I rather
think he wore them because they were picturesque. He was a handsome
fellow, with rough-hewn features. A wide mouth, and very white, even
teeth. A cruel mouth, when it went grim. But the smile was intriguing:
I should think particularly so to women.

He had a way with him, this devil-may-care bandit. Strange mixture of
a pirate of old and an outlaw of our modern world. With a sash at his
waist, a red handkerchief about his forehead, and a bloody knife
between his teeth. I could have fancied him a fabled pirate of the
Spanish Main. A few hundred years ago when these dry Lowlands held the
tossing seas. But I had seen him, so far, largely seated quietly in
his chair at his instrument table, a cigarette dangling from his lips,
and, instead of a red bandanna about his forehead, merely the elastic
band holding the lens of his image-finder. It caught in the locks of
his curly black hair. He