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decreasing toward the outer surface. He hefted it. It was unnaturally heavy. Strangely fascinating, altogether lovely. Think of it around the neck of Lynette Mason…
    Not now. Kelly wrapped it in paper, tucked it into an empty pint jar. Behind the cabin, an old shag-bark slanted up out of the black humus and overhung the roof like a gray and tattered beach-umbrella. Kelly dug a hole under one of the arched roots, buried the jewel.
    Returning to the cabin, he walked to the visiphone, reached out to call the station. While his hand was yet a foot from the buttons, thebuzzer sounded…Kelly drew his hand back.
    Better not to answer.
    The buzzer sounded again—again. Kelly stood holding his breath, looking at the blank faceof the screen.
    Silence.
    He washed the last of the grease-paint from his face, changed his clothes, ran outside, jumped into his air-boatand took off for Bucktown.
     

     
    Helanded on the roof of the station, noting that Herli’s car was parked in its wonted slot. Suddenly he felt less puzzled and forlorn. The station withits machinery and solid Earth-style regulations projectedreassurance, a sense of normality. Somehow the ingenuity and aggressive attack which had taken men to the stars would solve the present enigma.
    Or would it? Ingenuity could take men through space, but ingenuity would find itself strained locating a speck of a planet a hundred thousand light-years in an unknown direction. And Kelly still had his own problem: the jewel. Into his mind’s-eye came a picture: the cabin by the lake, the dilapidated gray parasol of the shag-bark, and glowing under the root, the green eye of the sacred jewel. In the vision he saw the black-robed figure of a Han priest moving across the open space before the cabin, and he saw the flash of the dough-white face…
    Kelly turned a troubled glance up at the big red sun, entered the station.
    The administration section was vacant; Kelly climbed the stair to the operationsdepartment.
    He stopped in the doorway, surveyed the room. It covered the entire square of the upper floor. Work-benches made a circuit of the room, with windows above. A polished cylinder, the cosmoscope, camedown through the ceiling, and below was the screen to catch the projection.
    Four men stood by the star-index, running a tape. Herli glanced up briefly, turned back to the clicking mechanism.
    Strange. Herli should have been interested, should at least have said hello.
    Kelly self-consciously crossed the room. He cleared his throat. “Well—I made it. I’m back.”
    “So I see,” said Herli.
    Kelly fell silent. He glanced up through the window at the red sun. “What do you make of it?”
    “Not the least idea. We’re running the star-tapeson the off chance it’s been registered—a last-gasp kind of hope.”
    There was more silence. They had been talking before he had entered the room; Kelly sensed this from their posture.
    At last Mapes said with a forced casualness, “Seen the news?”
    “No,” said Kelly. “No, I haven’t.” There was more in Mapes’ voice, something more personal than the shift of the planet. After a moment’s hesitation he went to the visiphone, pushedthe code for news.
    The screen lit, showed a view of the swamp. Kelly leaned forward. Buried up to their necks were a dozen boys and girls from the Bucktown High-school. Crawling eagerly over them were the small three-legged salt-crabs; others popped up out of the slime, or tunnelled under toward the squirming bodies.
    Kelly could not stand the screams. He reached forward—
    Herli said sharply, “Leave it on!”—harder than Kelly had ever heard him speak. “The announcement is due pretty soon.”
    The announcement came, in the rasping toneless pidgin of the Han priests.
    “Among the outsiders is a wicked thief. He has despoiled us of the Seven-yearEye. Let him come forward for his due. Until the thief has brought the Seven-year Eye in his own hand to the sacred temple of Han, every hour one of the