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cleared away the miscellaneous junk disposed on the shelves and in the drawers. Without his at first realizing, they made a picture to him: a kind of implied portrait of their owner. This curiously shaped seashell, from some planet where the mollusca had a copper-based metabolism to judge by the bluish sheen of the lining; this necklet of rock crystal, pink and blue and yellow; this solido of two smiling elderly folk—her parents, possibly?
    It wasn’t until he came to tall closets in the far corner and found half a dozen costumes hanging there, together with a small stringed instrument which he did not recognize, that he checked and started to think seriously about the conclusions he ought to draw. Even then he went ahead with what he had originally intended—changing clothes, putting aside the brown robe of his order in favor of garments not worn since his arrival on Annanworld, but still a fair fit to his body, whose leanness had remained constant since his late adolescence.
    There was a reminder in that stringed instrument of his own mother, who had been a wandering singer and teacher. It was the means of getting a living. Surely that, and the clothing, would not have been left behind, no matter how eager she was to escape Vix and lose herself on Annanworld?And it was still less likely that she should have abandoned small souvenir items, like the solido, which were no burden to carry and presumably held emotional significance for her.
    Maybe she went aground to buy something,
he told himself at last, marveling how sluggish his mind had been made by the annoyance his disagreement with Vix had caused.
I must tell Vix not to do anything rash—
    In that instant, when he stood with one leg in his old but serviceable breeches of Vellian silk, the ship’s gravity went on, and within seconds he felt the surging of the drive. This was not the slickly smooth operation of a large liner, elaborately maintained for the passengers’ comfort—like the only other vessels in which he had ever flown space. It was the jarring violence of a scoutship stripped for action, without frills, and seemed to vibrate all the way into his belly, triggering a reflex nausea.
    He resisted it in near-panic, thinking what foul company Vix would be if he worked out for himself, many systems distant, what Spartak had just deduced from the clothing still in the cabin.
    He struggled out into the corridor, and as he turned from sliding shut the cabin door, caught a glimpse of movement at the foot of the companionway leading up to the control room. It was too brief, and the drive-induced nausea was now too strong, for him to get a clear view of the person who had gone by, but the obvious deduction was that Vineta was aboard after all.
    He had no time to work out where she might have been hiding; he was completely unfamiliar with this design of ship, and if Vix hadn’t found her she must have concealed herself very thoroughly. Or else Vix himself wasn’t yet aware of all the nooks and crannies in his prized new possession.…
    No, rational thought was beyond him at the moment. Wait till the drive settled down to free-space operation—that would be soon enough to solve the riddle.
    He was on the point of returning to his cabin when he heard the cry.
    “Spa-ar-tak!”
    And the drive went off.
    The shock was like a dash of cold water, clearing the fog from his brain. With reflex speed he made for the companionway, scrambling up it with the agility of a Sirian ape.
    The shock was renewed as soon as he saw what was happening in the control room. It was no girl that he had glimpsed passing this way. It was a man, huge and bulky as a Thanis bull, his hair wild, his body cased in crude leather harness and his feet in steel-tipped boots, who now was wrestling chest-to-chest with the tough but far smaller Vix, overbearing the redhead in a crushing embrace.
    Vix tried to butt him on the nose, failed as the attacker jerked his head back, lost his balance to one of