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having his deductions check out. Returning to the boat, he melted away its door lock.
    The man within was backed against the farther wall, a gun in his hand, waiting with a dry scream in his throat for the devil’ to break through. Saris pinpointed him telepathically: aft of the entrance—good! Opening the door a crack, just enough to admit his hand, he fired around the edge of it. The blaster was awkward in a grasp the size of his, but one bolt was enough.
    The smell of burned meat was thick around him. Now he had to work fast; there must be other craft in the vicinity. Collecting all the weapons, he hunched himself over the pilot’s chair—it was too small for him to sit in—and studied the control panel.
    The principle used was unfamiliar, something beyond the science of Langley’s time. Nor could he read the symbols on the controls. But by tracing the electric currents and gyro-magnetic fields with his mind, and applying logic, he got a notion of how to operate the thing.
    It rose a little clumsily as he maneuvered the switches, but he got the hang of it fast. Soon he was high in the sky, speeding through a darkness that whistled around him. One screen held an illuminated map with a moving red point that must represent his own location. Helpful.
    He couldn’t stay in this machine long; it would be identified and shot down. He must use it to get supplies and then to find a hiding place before dawn, after which it must fly westward to crash in the ocean. He should be able to adjust the automatic pilot to do that.
    Where to go? What to do?

V
    There was a party in the home of Minister Yulien, high commissioner of metallurgies. The cream of Solar and foreign society would be there, and Chanthavar brought the Explorer crew along.
    Langley accompanied the agent down tall, columned passages where the air glowed with a soft light and murals traced shifting patterns on the gleaming walls. Behind him sat half a dozen bodyguards, identical giants. Chanthavar had explained that they were his personal slaves and the result of chromosome duplication in an exogenesis tank. There was something not quite human about them.
    The spaceman was getting over his feeling of awkwardness, though he still couldn’t imagine that he looked like much with hairy skinny legs sticking out from under his tunic. He, Blaustein and Matsumoto had hardly been out of their palace suite in the day since they were released. They had sat around, saying little, now and then cursing in a whisper full of pain. It was still too new, too devastatingly sudden. They accepted Chanthavar’s invitation without great interest. What business did three ghosts have at a party?
    The suite was luxurious enough: furniture that molded itself to your contours and came when you called, a box which washed and brushed and depilated and massaged you and finished up by blowing scent on your scrubbed hide—softness and warmth and pastel color everywhere you looked. Langley remembered checked oilcloth on a kitchen table, a can of beer in front of him and the Wyoming night outside and Peggy sitting near.
    â€œChanthavar,” he asked suddenly, “do you still have horses?” There was a word for it in this Earthspeak they had taught him, so maybe …?
    â€œWhy, I don’t know.” The agent looked a bit surprised. “Never saw one that I remember, outside of historicals. I believe they have some on … yes, on Thor for amusement, if not on Earth. Lord Brannoch has often bored his guests by talking about horses and dogs.”
    Langley sighed.
    â€œIf there aren’t any in the Solar System, you could have one synthesized,” suggested Chanthavar. “They can make pretty good animals to order. Care to hunt a dragon someday?”
    â€œNever mind,” said Langley.
    â€œThere’ll be a lot of important people here tonight,” said Chanthavar. “If you can entertain one of them enough, your