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know who did it, or why?”
    “I can guess why,” said Dunne savagely.
    “Somebody,” said Haney’s tinny, unctuous voice through the helmets’ contact, “somebody knows what you’ve found and where it is. Eh?”
    Dunne was silent for long seconds. Then he said, “We didn’t find the Mountain.”
    “Okay,” said Haney blandly. “Cut us in on what you did find, and we’ll block the scheme the others have made and ferry you to your rock. You and the girl and supplies. We’ll land you. We’ll set up a bubble. Then we’ll stop by and pick you up next pickup-ship time, you and the girl and Keyes.”
    “Is this charity?” asked Dunne coldly.
    “It’s a gamble,” said Haney. “We get half the crystals you find while we’re gone. Half.”
    It was plausible. Had someone else made the offer, it might even be attractive. To take a man to and from his working—his mine—for half his take while there… It wasn’t bad under the circumstances. But Haney didn’t insist on the Mountain’s discovery, which might mean that he knew the facts. He might know what they’d found. And there was no assurance at all that he’d keep to such a bargain. Dunne knew better. There was no law in the Rings. There was nothing but his own self-respect to make a man keep a bargain when he could profit by breaking it.
    And there was the girl Nike, She definitely shouldn’t go off in Haney’s donkeyship.
    Dunne said, “No.”
    He let it go at that. Haney grimaced inside his helmet. He moved away. His partner was already stowing the supplies purchased for their ship. Haney went to his partner and touched helmets with him, for conversation not to be picked up by the pickup ship or Dunne.
    Haney went back to the pickup ship. He mounted the ship-ladder. His partner completed getting stores aboard.
    Something made Dunne stare after Haney. Nike was desperate to find her brother. Some. unimaginable emergency had driven her to ask to go into. the Rings with Dunne, to find her brother and to keep from traveling back to Horus and then back out to Outlook again. She didn’t realize how dangerous such a thing would be. She’d never been where there was no law and order. She couldn’t imagine the risks a completely lawless environment implied. They were bad enough for a man. They’d be impossible for a girl. But she was desperate, or thought she was. She’d have risked trusting herself to Dunne. When he refused to take her, had she tried to make a bargain with Haney?
    Dunne began to cross the spaceport above which the golden haze hovered perpetually. He saw the pickup ship’s personnel lock again. He noted that Haney’s stores were all aboard, and his partner was in the act of dogging the lock-door shut.
    Haney came out of the pickup ship. Behind him there came another figure in a space-suit. Haney helped it down the ladder with exaggerated chivalry—but there was need of assistance, at that. The first time one uses magnetized shoes in no gravity, clumsiness is inevitable.
    Dunne leaped, with his belt-jet for propulsion and guidance. He went soaring across the relatively level metal plain. He landed with a clank, facing Haney savagely. He turned on his helmet-phone and said coldly;
    “Oh, no, you don’t! Nike, back into the pickup ship! Haney, get into your ship and get to hell away from here!”
    Haney had to raise his own hand to make his own helmet-communicator go on. Dunne watched sharply. He saw the girl’s eyes turn, and faced himself so Haney was between Dunne and Haney’s. partner. Haney’s partner was in the airlock with a bazooka in his hand.
    “If your partner pulls trigger on that thing,” said Dunne icily, “you’ll be blown apart before the shell gets here.”
    Haney protested, “She wants to find her brother! You won’t take her! So she asked me to take her. Why not?”
    Dunne’s voice was very deadly indeed. “Because if you know where to take her, you’ll be the man with a reason to blow up my ship so I