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furnishings were starkly plain, solidly crafted of straight-grain
dark wood, nothing fancy.
    Over
against one wall the troopers had set up a multichannel radio station and
computer-access-and-readout. Further along and herded into a corner awaiting
him were half a dozen Scartanni prisoners. Bragan exchanged silent greetings
with the group-leader lieutenant, then stood awhile to study the prisoners. The
first thing he noticed was that they were all, still, securely bound. A plastic
cable linked elbows behind and another linked wrists in front. Simple,
effective, and uncomfortable. Also they were all linked to each other in a
chain, with barely room between them for movement. Bragan returned his gaze to
the lieutenant, raised a brow.
    "They
don't give us any choice, sir. They just don't grasp the notion of parole, or
behavior, or anything like it. We've tried. As fast as we turn one loose he
tries to make a dash for it, and we have to stun them or club them to make them
stop. They don't know when they're beat. It's exactly the same with the women
and kids. We have to tie them down, and then tie them together. And then watch
them like hawks!"
    "Yes.
And you can't put them into something secure, can you, not with this queer
building material of theirs?"
    "We
found that one out the hard way, sir. Locked up one bunch in a small room and
they went straight out through the opposite wall!"
    Bragan
nodded. For one awful moment he had the dream-feeling that this whole situation
was rapidly becoming as insubstantial as the stuff of the odd buildings, that
it was crumbling between his fingers as fast as he tried to grasp it. He shook
off the thought uneasily and swung his gaze back to the line of prisoners.
    "Which is
Mordin?"
    "At the far end,
sir."
    Bragan
nodded and paced slowly along the line, taking his time to study the specimens.
Long-range observation had told him that these people were in the human
category to within one tenth of one percent. This close he saw that the
correspondence was even closer, the differences nonexistent. They were as human
as he was. But here again—he was feeling for nuances now—there was that
impression of plain simplicity, lack of frills and ornament.
    The three women in the lineup were handsome,
could have been beautiful with just a little artifice, were attractive without
it. He studied them candidly, saw only chill indifference in their faces and
eyes. Clean, he thought, and well-groomed, but confined to essentials. No
trimmings. Clothing, for example. Shoes made by the simple method of cutting a
piece of hide some incjes larger then the foot outline, threading a thong, and
pulling the whole thing tight in front Dress—all alike—of some fine-knitted
wool-stuff, very fine and white for the single undergarment that he labeled unglamorously
as "drawers," and thicker knit and various colors for the single
overpiece that was made—he considered one—by taking a long strip two-and-a-half
feet wide, making a hole in the middle for the head, and catching it together
at the sides with buttons. A kind of tabard-tunic. He had reached the end.
    He
stood and stared at Hallex Mordin the way he would examine a prize animal.
Mordin stared back at him with indifference, a big broad-shouldered man with
something reminiscent of an oak tree about the way he stood. Gray in his thick
hair and deep-grooved lines on his face marked him as about sixty years old,
maybe more. That face was square, hard-planed, but by no means obtuse. There
were hints of intelligence and quiet watchfulness. Bragan took out the notion
of "oak tree" and substituted "coiled-spring" as he sensed
the atmosphere of explosive power here. A man to be reckoned with.
    "I am Denzil Bragan," he said,
suddenly and flatly, without emphasis, "Supreme Executive of the Zorgan
Fleet on Scarta. You are Hallex Mordin, the senior landholder of Stopa. Will
you talk with me?"
    "Why
should I?" Mordin demanded instantly, but in a surprisingly mild tone for
such