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but it bowed a little here and there like a resting snake. Or like a parasitic worm, the intellectual lieutenant thought, because the segments of such a worm could separate and start anew when they found something to sink their hooks into, going over to an ecstasy of ovulation. And this wavering line was splitting, dividing at the head, going this way and that into the parallel sets of prefabricated huts erected along the high wire barriers with the one guarded gate—and even sometimes getting through the gate.
    It was the weather, he thought. Coloring his mind the same dismal gray as the sky.
    So backward! He had walked twice the whole length of the sullen line, fascinated against his will by the dirt and the raggedness. Some of them lacking limbs, for the love of life, when a five-day graft and a course of cell-stimulant was all it took to replace even a leg. And sores dressed with foul rags. And teeth missing. It was a miracle that any of them were allowed through the gate at all.
    Still, for the mines on Vashti … And after all, they were only cargo to him.
    He cast a longing glance backward over his shoulder to the ship resting in its cradle like a squat egg, the planetary insignia of his home world glowing luminous on its nearer side. For all the good he was doing here he could be comfortably in his cabin, playing over that tantalizing not-quite-erotic recording by that new anonymous composer, the one for whom they had made such extravagant and justified claims. Was it a man or a woman who had—?
    He sighed. Surely the job wouldn’t take long now. But it was a long time since any of the prospective workers had emerged from the examination huts and turned towards the gate. Almost all of them for the last half-hour or so had gone despondently back towards the city, growing smaller like insects as they walked across the concrete with lowered heads.
    Eight hundred, they needed. Surely out of all these thousands it wouldn’t take long to find eight hundred—even if they were undernourished miserable wrecks.
    “How’s it going, Major?” a voice behind him said. He half-turned, seeing a large, prosperous man in a temperature suit of dull green and black, his fingers heavy with rings. By his accent, an upper class native of the area.
    “Lieutenant, not Major,” he corrected. And went on, “Slowly, I’m afraid.”
    “So I gather, so I gather,” the large man said. “Name’s Zethel, by the way. Yes, I believe you can only take eight hundred. We’re giving you too many to choose from, isn’t that it?” he chuckled.
    Not wanting to be impolite to this man who might be locally important, the intellectual lieutenant feigned an interest in a subject that he didn’t care the fission of a nucleus about.
    “There certainly are a lot of applicants,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d allow so many of them to leave the planet. Not that we’re going to complain. Our mines on Vashti won’t be automatized for another ten years or so, and we’ll need plenty of human labor till they are. But I’m puzzled.”
    “First time here?” Zethel said. “And only just arrived?”
    “Yes to both. All I knew when we touched down was what we were told from home—that there was mercenary labor available in quantity. So we came at once, of course.”
    Zethel grunted. “Well, let’s be honest—you’re doing us a favor taking some of ’em off our hands. You aren’t going to have an easy time with some of them, I guess. We had a spot of trouble here recently. Maybe you heard about that?”
    The intellectual lieutenant remembered something vague he had caught on a news channel without really paying attention to. He said, frowning, “Some sort of popular revolt?”
    “Not so popular,” Zethel said. “The last heir of the old ruling house—this island has been an incredible backwater area clinging with crazy doggedness to out-of-date ideas—anyway, this Prince Luth called a revolt against the government, and