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behind the counter to take up the
office of buyer, but the women had both apparently heard tall tales
from Terrans in the past--
    "Bell, now really, were you on that planet,"
asked the assistant office manager, "--or have you merely heard of
it?"
    He rolled his eyes and surprised Cyra with a
discreet pat as she squeezed by him.
    "What, am I a spaceman, or a Scout, to have
all my stories disbelieved?"
    They laughed, but he continued, assuming a
serious air.
    "Actually, it was almost all a disaster. The
planet you should never go to is Djymbolay. I arrived just after I
finished a painting on board the liner, and was pretty well spent.
I had my luggage searched twice for contraband, and then they
confiscated the painting as an unauthorized and unsanctified
depiction of the world."
    He shook his head, then tapped it with his
finger. "They wanted to have me put away for blasphemy or
something, I think. It took a Scout who happened by--all thanks to
little John!--to let me keep my papers and my paint and my freedom.
Off with my head or worse, I expect was the plan! But the Scout was
there on another matter and interceded. The locals walked me across
the port under armed guard, and the Scout came, too, to be sure
that it was gently done--and they kept me confined to the spaceport
exit-lounge for the twelve days the ship was there. If several kind
ladies hadn't taken pity, and brought me meals and blankets, I
might well have starved and froze."
    Cyra bit back a comment half-way to her
lips; after all she knew not where he'd slept before she met him,
nor, for that matter, that he always returned to his own rooms on
the afternoons and evenings he went to the lectures at Scout
Academy. She only knew he returned to the store with sketches and
ideas and full of hope that he might eventually be permitted to
visit a new world, to be the first painter, the first
interpreter....
    In a few moments more, the transaction was
made; she paid a fairly low price for the emerald ring--the one
suggested by the seller--and agreed to look at earrings that might
be a match.
    The two women gone. Bell looked at her
carefully.
    "You're tired--and you've been angry."
    Exasperated by his grasp of the obvious,
Cyra waved her hands in the air in a wild gesture, and snapped,
"How else?"
    "You might be pleased, after all. The
emeralds were got at a decent price."
    "Yes, a decent price. But if I'm going to
afford you, my friend, we'll need to do better."
    He looked at her with the same air of
frankness he'd used when talking about the disaster that had cost
him a painting, and shook his head.
    "Yes, I know; I am hardly convenient for
myself, much less for anyone else."
    "That's not what I meant!" she protested. "I
mean that--I mean that it is difficult to find a larger place to
live hereabouts, and nearer to my apartment there are those who
will not rent to someone who--"
    "Someone who might bring a Terran home of a
night," Bell finished, as she faltered. "Inconvenient I said, and I
meant! " he insisted with heat. "I don't mind sleeping here in the
store, after all, though the light is not always good. Perhaps you
can offer to rent the corner place the next street over."
    They had been over that before, too. Bell's
situation was so changeable that neither knew how long they might
find each other's company pleasant, useful, or convenient. He could
hardly sign a lease, with his "transient alien" status in the port
computers assuring that any who looked would laugh at his request.
Even getting a room beyond the spaceport was difficult for him,
except here in the Low Port area. Mid-port was too dear for his
budget in any case.
    He could hardly co-sign with her, either.
The conditions her Delm had set were strict and might well bear on
that--if she wished to ever return to the House, she would, during
her time of exile, refrain from forming formal alliances; she must
not buy real estate; she was forbidden to marry, or to have
children....
    There could be no co-signing;