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away from us. Tell your story.”
    “Well, sir, the one with the cut head is a Yeshtite and the other an adherent of some new cult called Krishnan Science. They fell to disputing at Razjun’s Tavern, the Krishnan Scientist holding that all evil was nonexistent, and therefore the Safq and the temple of Yesht therein had no reality, nor did the worshippers of Yesht. Well, this Yeshtite took exception and challenged…”
    “He lies!” said the Yeshtite. “I spoke no word of challenge, and did but defend myself against the villainous assault of this fap rascallion…”
    This “fap rascallion,” having coughed the water out of his windpipe, interrupted to shout: “Liar yourself! Who cast a mug of falat-wine into my face? If that be no challenge…”
    “ ’Twas but a gentle proof of my reality, you son of Myande the Execrabte!” The Yeshtite, dark blood trickling down his face, blinked at Fallon and turned his wrath upon the Earthman. “A Terran creature giving commands to a loyal Balhibu in his own capital! Why go not you scrowles back to those enseamed planets whence you came? Why corrupt you our ancestral faiths with depraved, subversive heresies?”
    Fallon asked, “You three can take this theologian and his pal to the House of Judgment, can’t you?”
    “Aye,” said the Krishnan guards.
    “Then take them there. I shall meet you back at the armory in time for the second round.”
    “Why take me?” wailed the witness. “I’m but a decent law-abiding citizen. I can be summoned any time…”
    Fallon replied: “If you can identify yourself at the House of Judgment, they may let you go home.”
    Fallon watched the procession file out of the Square of Qarar, the chains of the prisoners jingling. He was glad that he did not have to go along. It was a good three-hoda hike, and the omnibus-coaches would have stopped running by now.
    Moreover he was glad of a chance to visit the Safq by himself. He could do so less conspicuously in his official capacity; and to be able to do so without his fellow-guards was better yet. Luck seemed with him so far.
    Anthony Fallon shouldered his bill and set off eastward. When he had gone a few blocks, the apex of the Safq began to appear over the low roofs of the intervening houses. The structure, he knew, stood just inside the boundary separating the Juru from the Bacha district, in which lay nearly all the other temples of Zanid. Religion was the business of the Bacha, just as manufacturing was that of the Izandu.
    The Balhibo word safq means any of a family of small Krishnan invertebrates, some aquatic and some terrestrial. An ordinary land-safq looks something like a Terran snail, spiral shell and all, but instead of slithering along on a carpet of its own slime it creeps upon a myriad of small legs.
    The Safq proper was an immense conical ziggurat of hand-fitted jadeite blocks, over a hundred and fifty meters high, with a spiral fluting, in obvious imitation of the shell of a living safq. Its origin was lost in the endless corridors of Krishnan history. During the city-state period, following the overthrow of the Kalwm Empire by the then-barbarous Varastuma, the city of Zanid had grown up around the Safq, huddling against it until it could hardly be seen except at a distance. King Ear’s great predecessor, King Balade, had cleared the buildings away from the monumental edifice and put a small park around it.
    Fallon entered this park and walked slowly around the huge circumference of the Safq, ears peeled and eyes probing the structure, as if by sheer will-power he could force his vision to penetrate the stone.
    It would take more than eyesight to do that, however. Various marauders had tried to bore into the structure during the last few millennia, but had been baffled by the hardness of the jadeite. As far back as historical records went, the priests of Yesht had held the Safq.
    Nor was the Safq the only building owned by the cult of Yesht; there were smaller temples in