"Thank you," said Dumarest. "For saving my life."

  "You were fortunate in more ways than one. The screams of the man you injured attracted the police. They immediately summoned an ambulance. The medical orderly gave you quick-time to slow your metabolism and put you in freeze." The doctor paused as if wondering whether to say more. "I found a dart buried in your scalp. It bore traces of a substance which took our medical computer some time to isolate and more to determine a neutralizing compound. The difficulty was in maintaining life while it took effect; hence the use of the machines."

  "I understand," said Dumarest. "And the man?"

  "The one you injured?" The doctor shrugged. "Dead. Not from his injury, you merely tore his eye, but from other causes."

  "Such as?"

  "Cardiac failure." The doctor became brusque. "We have talked long enough. Now you had better rest for a while in order to recover your strength. But do not be concerned. You have nothing to worry about."

  Nothing, thought Dumarest as the man left followed by the nurse. Nothing aside from the fact that someone had tried to kill him and would probably try again.

  Rising from the bed he crossed to where curtains hid a window. It was no surprise to find it barred. He stood looking out at the night, the reflection of his face limned against the clouded sky. It had been raining again and tiny droplets made miniature rainbows against the panes. He touched the back of his head. The wound had healed; aside from that he had no proof that time had passed at all.

  He lowered his eyes. The room was set high in the building and the view stretched across an ugly cluster of roads, stores and huddled buildings to where the space-field glowed beneath its circle of lights. As he watched a ship lifted upwards, bright in the glowing field of its Erhaft drive as it reached towards the stars. Again he looked at the city. Limitless space and worlds without number spread across the galaxy. Why did men insist on building their habitations so close?

  Turning from the window he studied the room. A bed, an empty cabinet, toilet facilities and nothing else. He wore nothing but a loose hospital robe, his only personal possession the ring on his left hand. At least they had left him that. The door was unlocked. He opened it and met the flat stare of an armed guard seated in the passage outside. Slowly the man shook his head.

  Closing the door Dumarest returned to the bed and eased the aching muscles of his body. He was a prisoner. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  They kept him waiting for two days and then returned his clothes and took him to the place of interrogation. It could be no other than that, a room in which someone would ask questions and demand answers and, if there were no instruments of persuasion to be seen, it was no proof that they did not exist or would not be used. Most probably they had been used; a drugged man could retain few secrets.

  "Dumarest." The man sitting at the wide desk was of indeterminate age, his face smooth, bland, his body almost as slight as that of a boy. He picked up a card lying before him. "Earl Dumarest, traveler, arrived on Selend seventeen days ago from… ?" He paused, looking up. His eyes were gray flecked with motes of blue.

  "Onsul."

  "And before that?"

  "Vington."

  "Which you reached from Technos." The examiner smiled, his teeth very white and very pointed. "I am glad that you are being sensible, Earl. I may call you that? My name is Cluj. Please be seated." He waited as Dumarest took a chair. "What is your planet of origin?"

  "Earth."

  "A strange name for a world. There is no record of it in our files, but no matter, there are so many worlds." Without change of tone or expression he said, "Why did you come to Selend?"

  "To visit Korotya." If he had been questioned under drugs there was no point in lying and it was obvious now that he had. Else why should Cluj have checked on Earth? "I had heard of the place, a rumor, and I wanted to see it."

  "Why?"

  "I was curious."

  "About the Original People?" The examiner leaned back in his chair, smiling. "I know all that you have done since your arrival. The guide at the museum remembers you well. A great pity that you traveled so far to learn so little. You saw the ruins."

  "I saw a hologram of ruins," corrected Dumarest.

  "You are precise and wise to be so, but I assure you the depiction was genuine. Korotya, unfortunately, is lost to us forever." Cluj picked up the card and began to rap the edge softly on his desk. "The Original People," he mused. "A minor religious sect holding strange beliefs and conducting esoteric ceremonies. They claim that we all originated on one planet." He looked at Dumarest. "Earth. Are you one of them?"

  "No."

  "And yet you seek to find them, is that it? If you thought they were here you were mistaken. We do not tolerate such misguided fanatics on Selend. And the city, the ruins of Korotya, can you honestly believe that such people could have built it and kept it hidden for so long? The thing is against reason."

  Cluj threw down the card. "Now let us deal with a more important matter. The attack on your person is something which disturbs me. It is a puzzle and I do not like puzzles. It was not a simple attempt at robbery and neither was it a thwarted assassination. Later analysis has shown that the poison fed into your blood was not intended to kill but to paralyze. A most sophisticated compound and one beyond the reach of any ordinary criminal. Its effect is to render a person immediately helpless with all the apparent symptoms of death. Now why should you be attacked in such a manner?"

  "A case of mistaken identity, perhaps?"

  "It is barely possible," conceded the examiner. "Such things happen. Unfortunately we cannot question the man who fired the dart into your scalp. He is dead."

  "So I heard," said Dumarest dryly. "The doctor told me the cause was cardiac failure."

  "He did not lie."

  "Maybe not, but there are many ways to stop a heart from beating."

  "True, in this case it was a hole burned with a laser." Cluj leaned forward across his desk. "You realize what this means? The man was not working alone. It was a planned attempt and if you hadn't been so cautious it would have succeeded. You would simply have vanished without trace. A stranger, collapsing in the street—who would have questioned either the incident or the disposal of the body? And if they tried once they could well try again." He paused as if waiting for Dumarest to comment and, when he remained silent, added, "I will be frank with you. The episode carries political implications, a potential danger we can do without. Selend must not become a battleground for warring factions."

  Dumarest said, quietly, "You over exaggerate the matter. I still think that I was mistaken for someone else."

  "If you think that then you are a fool and I do not take you for a fool. I believe that you realize perfectly the implications of what has occurred. You have enemies and you are not the type of man to suffer injury unavenged. However, that is not my concern or will cease to be very soon. I will be blunt. You are no longer welcome on this world. I have ordered your deportation."

  Dumarest relaxed. "There is no need for you to take official action. I will leave as soon as I find a suitable ship."

  "The matter has been arranged."

  "Not to my satisfaction," snapped Dumarest. "I am not a criminal and this is a civilized world. I demand the right to book my own passage."

  "And how will you pay for it?" Cluj watched as Dumarest pulled back his left sleeve and revealed the tattoo on his arm. The metallic imprint of his universal credit shone in the light. Quietly he said, "I would not leave any man totally destitute. You have, perhaps, enough left to maintain you for a week in a modest hotel."

  Dumarest lowered his sleeve. His face was hard, taut with anger. "I had cash, also. Does Selend put uniforms on its thieves?"

  Cluj was offended. "You were not robbed. There was a matter of paying certain expenses: the cost of your hospitalization, the research needed to neutralize the poison, other things. The price of a long High passage for one. The cash and credit barely sufficed. You will, naturally, receive a full accounting." He spoke into a grille on his desk. "This interview is terminated. Collect the subject and deal with him as arranged." To Dumarest he said, "You leave at dawn. Do not return to Selend."

  * * *

  They took him to the spacefield, to a small building set within the barrier, a place used for holding undesirable transients. The cell was small, clean enough but cramping to a man used to open spaces. From the single barred window Dumarest could see the field, the ships tall against the darkening sky. One of them would carry him from Selend and dump him where? The guard either did not know or had orders to remain silent.

  "Don't worry about it, friend," he advised. "You'll travel just like an ordinary passenger. Quick-time to shorten the journey and all the rest of it. What does it matter where the ship is bound?"

  It mattered. Too many worlds were at the end of the line, dead ends without industry or offering any hope of being able to build a stake. Such worlds were a traveler's nightmare. Stranded, without money to buy a passage, it was almost impossible to escape. Death in abject poverty was the usual end. Had Cluj chosen to send him to one of those? Or was he being even more direct?

  Dumarest thought about it while sitting on the narrow bunk. His deportation had been planned, his money taken while he lay unconscious in the hospital. Had someone suggested that course of action? Advised it? Used pressure to win what they had tried to gain by the attack? Was he to be delivered, an unsuspecting parcel, into the hands of the hunters?

  It was a risk he dared not take. Somehow he had to break free of the suspected trap. From the window he studied the vessels spaced on the field. Five of them; Selend was a busy world. One stood with gaping plates, obviously undergoing overhaul or repair. He eliminated it. Another had just arrived, the loading ports open, cargo streaming down the ramp to waiting vehicles. It was barely possible that it could off-load, restock and leave at dawn but he doubted it. One of the remaining three must be the ship on which he was booked, but which?

  Carefully he studied them. One was sealed, the cargo loaded and the ship apparently ready to leave. Captains did not favor delay—once ready for space they seldom lingered—yet the crew could be enjoying a short leave now that the work was done. The other two were still loading, one with a stream of heavy bales, the other with a trickle of smaller bundles. Some men clustered at the foot of the ramp, poorly dressed, huddled as if for mutual protection. Travelers hoping for a Low passage.

  Thoughtful, Dumarest turned from the window and stared at the barred door of his cell. It was a minor barrier compared to another. How to escape without money? Who on those ships would give him passage as a gift? He knew the answer too well. Then he looked at his ring, the thick band and the flat stone which shone like freshly spilled blood. Cluj had made a mistake.

  He waited until dark and then hammered at the barred door. The guard came, grumbling, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was a big man, thickly muscled and inclined to be truculent. His manner softened a little as he heard what Dumarest had to say.

  "You want some wine and a good meal? Well, I guess it could be arranged if you've the money to pay for it."

  "I've got credit." Dumarest displayed his tattoo. "If you've got a banking machine we could cash it and get something decent to eat and drink. Look," he urged as the man hesitated. "What can you lose? I'll transfer the credit to your account and you give me two-thirds in value."

  "Two-thirds?"

  "Make it a half. Just bring the machine here and well do it right away. I'm starving."

  The guard nibbed thoughtfully at his chin. "I can't do that, bring the machine here, I mean. It's a fixture in the office. I guess I could take you down to it, though. A half, you say?"

  It was a good profit and he would make more by bolstering the price of the food and wine. And it was safe enough, a short journey to the office and then back to the cell. Five minutes, ten at the most; the opportunity was too good to be missed.

  "All right," he decided. "But don't try anything smart. We don't want to put you aboard with a busted head." Unlocking the door of the cell he gestured down the passage. "Turn right at the end," he ordered. "And let's make this fast."

  Dumarest hit him on the jaw.

  It was a hard blow, delivered with the full force of back and shoulders, and the man slumped as if he'd been shot. Dumarest caught the sagging body, pushed it into the cell and slammed the door. Quietly he entered the office. It was empty and he took time to glance at the papers littering the desk. The Lactiae was due to leave at dawn.

  The rain had started again, sleeting drops making a curtain of silver beneath the glare of the circling lights. They stung his eyes as Dumarest left the office and raced across the field. Ahead lay the two ships he had spotted earlier, loading finished now, one with a savage red light winking from its prow. He reached it, climbed the ramp and met the hostile stare of the handler.

  "What the hell do you want?" The man was abrupt. "We're just getting ready to leave."

  "Good. I want passage."

  "The old man takes care of that."

  "Low, not High." Dumarest looked around. He was in the lower section close to the cargo and freeze. A bench stood to one side, a vice clamped to the surface. Slipping off his ring he tore the stone free with his teeth and put it between the jaws. He threw the band towards the handler and, as the man examined it, tightened the jaws of the vice.

  The stone shattered into a million crystalline shards.

  "Are you crazy?" The handler stared at the glittering fragments. "Ruining a stone like that!"

  Dumarest was curt. "Forget the stone. Look at the band. It's worth a High, passage. It's yours if you'll carry me Low."

  The handler was well past youth, shrewd with much experience of men. He looked calculatingly at Dumarest as he weighed the ring in his hand. "You're running from trouble, eh? Well, it's none of my business. We're bound for Dradea. It's a hell of a long journey but that won't bother you the way you'll be traveling." He bounced the weight of metal in his hand. "Just a warning, friend. If this is a phony you'll pay for it."

  With callous indifference, denied the numbing drugs which would ease the pain of resurrection so that he would scream his lungs raw with the pain of returning circulation. That and other things. Those riding Low had no defense against a handler full of spite or turning sour.

  "It's genuine," said Dumarest.

  "And all you have?" The handler shrugged. "Well, that's the way it goes. You've ridden Low before? Good. Then you know what to do."

  To strip and lie in a cabinet designed for the transportation of animals. To sink into oblivion and ride doped, frozen and ninety percent dead, gambling his life against the fifteen percent death rate. He had done it so often before. Too often. Maybe this time would be the last. A man's luck could not last forever.

  Chapter Two

  Veruchia came late to the stadium, leaving it until the last possible moment when to delay further would be beyond excuse and taken as a deliberate insult. That would be both stupid and unwise; policy dictated that she should have been at her place in the high box long ago and yet, at times, personal feelings made it hard to be so calculating. So she compromised. She would be there and would make certain that she was seen, but not even for the rule of a world would she subject herself to greater degradation.

  Trumpets sounded as she passed the guards, her footsteps loud in the following hush as she climbed the stairs. She slowed a little, reluctant to witness what was taking place, conscious even here beneath the stands of the anticipation above. But there was no escape. As she climbed the final steps and stood blinking in the brilliant sunlight she heard the roar of the crowd. It was deafening, the sound of thirty thousand people yelling as one, and their voice was the hungry scream of a beast: an animal gloating at the sight of blood and demanding more.

  It was contagious, that demand. She felt raw, primitive emotions stir her blood despite her contempt for the games and shook herself, angrily, making for her chair. Even so her eyes betrayed her, glancing at the arena where men ran forward with nets and tridents, seeing the broken shape and the carmine pool. Quickly she looked at the other occupants of the box, seeing what she had expected, a vague hope that others would have had the strength to register their disapproval fading as she counted heads.

  Chorzel was there, naturally, his great body crammed into the royal seat, his face that of a graven image, unmoving, his eyes mere slits in the puffed contours of his face. She glanced at his hands, frowning as she saw the thick fingers clamped to the arms of his chair, the skin taut over the knuckles. Quickly she glanced back at his face. It was beaded with sweat, a tiny rivulet of perspiration running from his forehead down over one cheek to stain the gaudy fabric circling his throat. Her frown deepened. It was hot, true, but Chorzel did not usually suffer from the heat and he was most certainly not a man to bear discomfort without need. Was he so enamored of what lay on the sand that he could not lift a hand to wipe his face?

  It was possible and again she wondered what had made him turn the relatively harmless games into the present disgusting spectacle. The given reasons she knew —she had heard them all too often and in too minute detail—but still she refused to be convinced. Yet how could she be so certain that she was right and he and the others wrong? The populace, at least, seemed to bear out his theories and so did their rulers. Vidda, for example; the woman looked as if she had just left the arms of a lover, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glazed, her body redolent of sensual passion.

  And Selkas? He looked as he always did, utterly detached, casual, bland in his armor of cynical amusement. The smooth skin of his cheeks belied his age and yet he must be as old as Chorzel. Not for the first time she wondered what had made him drop all aspirations to power and adopt the habits of a dilettante.