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    sun," one of them said; and another, "A man mad enough to set a blaze would be too mad to tell us why."
    The village elder said quietly, "Any chance this is a Terran? I've heard that they do mad things."
    One of the young men, one who had told the girl Marilla of their grandfather's death, said, "I've been in the Trade City, Father, and seen the Terrans when they were on Alton lands, years ago. Mad they may
    be, but not like that. They have given us farseeing eye lenses, and news of new things, chemicals ," he used the Terran Empire word, "to smother fires. They would not set a forest to burn."
    "That's true," murmured one; and, "Yes. Remember when the lower Carrial Ridge burned and men came from the Trade City to help us put it out, flew here in an airship to help us."
    "Not the Terrans, then," the older man said. He repeated, "Get a rope—and don't say a word to the women."
    By the time the sun broke over the lower ridge, red and dripping with cloud and fog like a weeping
    cyclops' eye, the man had ceased to struggle and hung limp like a black flag above the dead forest.
    The villagers, breathing easier and thinking that now, perhaps, the rash of terrifying fires would cease, had no way of knowing, in the widely scattered and wild mountains, that in the thousands of miles of
    forests this scene, or something very like it, had been repeated at least a dozen times in the last year.
    No one knew that except the woman who called herself Andrea Closson.
    "Darkover. It's a damned funny place, you know. We hold scraps of it, by compact, for trade, just as we do with planets all over the galaxy. You know the routine. We leave the governments alone. Usually,
    after the people of the various worlds have seen our technologies, they start to get tired of living under hierarchies or monarchies and demand to come into the Empire of their own accord. It's almost a
    mathematical formula. You can predict the thing. But Darkover doesn't. We don't quite know why, but
    they say we just don't have a thing they want…"
    Disgruntled Terran Empire Legate, repeating a common complaint of politicians on Darkover.
    "You are to house and feed them with the best and treat them well," Danilo Syrtis repeated to the small crowd of swart mountain Darkovans. He indicated the four Terrans, uniformed with the dress of
    Spaceforce. He ignored the protest he could sense and added, "It is the will of Hastur, and—" he made a ritualistic gesture, seizing the handle of his small dagger, and said, "I am authorized to say to you: an insult to one of these men will be avenged as an insult to Regis Hastur's own self."
    " Vai dom, Syrtis; need we see the Compact outraged at our own firesides?" asked one man, and Danilo flushed and said, "No." He told the Terrans, "You won't need your weapons. Better give them to me."
    One after another, reluctantly, the men surrendered their regulation shockers and Danilo turned them
    over to a green and black Darkovan City Guard official, saying, "Keep them in bond until we return."
    He walked, head lowered, back toward the Arilinn Tower which rose at the edge of the small airstrip.
    Regis was waiting for him there, with their cousin, Lerrys Ridenow—tall, red-headed, saturnine, a man
    in his early forties, long-faced and looking cynical. Lerrys gave Danilo a casual cousinly greeting, kissed Regis on the cheek, and said, "So you made it here. I thought you'd stay in your snug nest in the Terran Zone, like a worm in a bale of silk."
    "More like a rabbit trapped by a weasel in his own hole," Regis said, and followed Lerrys into the Tower. He thought he had never felt such relief in his life. Inside here, at least, nothing could touch him, and he need not fear what would happen to his world or his family if an assassin's knife or bullet found
    his heart. Lerrys asked, "Is it true, then? That they hold you prisoner in the Terran Zone? We heard that rumor and I told them even the Terrans could not keep you, even by force, against