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that made him five cems shorter than John Smith, and racked by the pain of DNA restructuring.
    After a month of discomfort and anguish, John Smith was gone. John Smith had been 178 cems tall; Cale Rankin was 173. John had weighed 90 kilos; Cale massed 80. Cale's darker brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes had replaced John's fair complexion, brown hair, and grey eyes. Scorpion 's papers showed that James Yor-Tarken had sold her to Cale Rankin, a native of Warden's World in the Sirius sector, some two years ago. Cale once again began growing a beard.
    During the long hours in the regen booth, John, now Cale, had studied the various star atlases he had bought, searching for a refuge.
    The Alliance of Free Systems would have been the perfect place to retire. It was the oldest and largest of the entities surviving the Fall. "Released" by the declining Empire some four hundred years ago, the thirty-one inhabited planets of the Alliance enjoyed the highest standard of living in man-settled space. The Alliance had foreseen the Fall, and prepared for it. Among other things, unfortunately, that meant they had very effective border controls, a strong anti-pirate bias, and a deep suspicion of armed ships. If Cale approached the Alliance in Scorpion , his papers would be scanned for the slightest inconsistencies, and he would be asked some very hard questions. Cale decided it would be safer to stay in the Old Empire, where fewer questions were asked and fewer documents demanded.
    Perhaps one of the old "glory worlds." The 'Mission for the Greater Glory of God' was a repressive theocracy. At its height, it had ruled twelve systems, with seven inhabited planets. Finally, some 275 years ago, its brutal excesses triggered a response from both the Alliance and the declining Empire. Even the Glory's large fleet had been no match for the combined might of the Empire and the Alliance, and once that fleet was defeated, uprisings on all seven worlds overthrew the Glory in bloody revolutions. All seven inhabited worlds had considered themselves betrayed and abandoned by the Empire. Three had petitioned to become members of the Alliance. However, the other four all became fiercely independent. One had rejected all government, and had reputedly declined into total anarchy. For some reason, though, pirates seemed to avoid Liberty. It might be interesting to find out why.
    Or perhaps Libertad, with nine systems and three inhabited worlds, all ruled by a hereditary king.
    Even discounting the worlds that had reverted to barbarism and those that had lost space travel capability, Cale had plenty of choices.
    His next stops, though, would not be to settle. He needed to convert some of his sunstones into more easily usable form. The fabulous value of even a small sunstone meant they were difficult to convert to local currencies, and even if the conversion were possible, it would certainly draw attention to the converter.
    No, he needed an intermediate form of wealth. One still easily portable and one that had value on almost all worlds, regardless of their local currency. He had settled on diamonds. Diamonds are still the hardest natural substance known to man, still made spectacular jewelry, and were still rare enough to be worth more per carat than anything except sunstones. They could also be converted to any of a thousand local currencies without a lot of questions being asked, as long as one was careful. And Cale planned to be careful. Sunstones were so rare and valuable that his conversion of even one large one into diamonds would be known throughout the sector in less than a month. He was going to have to convert one stone on one planet, and then quickly head directly for another planet to convert another one before word of the first transaction got around. However, he could not afford to let Scorpion be identified as being on both planets at the critical time. Finesse was needed. Fortunately, he had been foresighted enough to allow Yan Carbow to