"Lady, he will think, does think. From him perhaps others have learned."

She made a face and shrugged her shoulders. "I lose my caution when I answer a help cry. Perhaps we were wrong. But the man was ugly enough to have killed this little one." She held out her hand, and the smux extended a long curl of tongue to touch the tip of her finger.

"You have fitted the tape?" Lord-One Krip changed the subject.

"Last night when the workmen left," she answered. "I have learned much, and perhaps even this new body of mine retained some level of knowledge. When we lift we do so for Yiktor."

New body? wondered Farree. What story lay behind that? But he dared not question now.

"There has certainly been a change in the fitters," her companion returned. "They have kept on the job steadily this afternoon. Tomorrow we can move Bojor aboard. By the next sunrise we shall lift ship."

"Providing we get this astrogator Quanhi. But, Krip, of this I am sure, we shall get him, and for no reason which means us well. Our only protection is our sealed tape that cannot be withdrawn by any except my own hand."

"And that tape was bought on Ballard. The Dragon last raised from that world," the other answered her. "That is an open port – "

She nodded. "If we go threatened from the left, we can only hope for aid from the right. On no other world are such tapes for sale, and we had to deal with those outside the law of the League in order to get it. News travels near as fast as thought. Ah, here comes our new shipmate and with him Quanhi – you are sure that this is the one who met him in the Limits, small one?"

The Lady moved aside a fraction from the doorway and Farree could see out into the lighted field. He would be certain of that emblazoned badge anywhere, but as for the man – he could not be sure. So he reported.

"Quanhi," Lady Maelen repeated the name. "And of no world – perhaps a Free Trader then."

"Not so," Lord-One Krip snapped. He was frowning now, his attention all for the man coming toward them. "We shall see how much this one desires to become one of the crew," Lord-One Krip observed. "Stay in the shadows," he spoke now to the hunchback. "It is better that they do not see you and perhaps speak of you."

Farree speedily hunkered back, Toggor riding on his shoulder. Bojor moved aside as if ordered, giving only a snuffing sniff in the hunchback's direction. Yazz was lying full length, lost in the shadows at the back of the hut.

The man from the other ship looked even younger in this stronger light than the other – with an open expression which Farree found hard to think of as belonging to a plotter. He answered Lord-One Krip's questions freely and openly but —

In spite of the order given Farree and his own uneasiness, he sent a single tendril, thread fine, toward the other's mind. And he met —

Nothingness!

Not a barrier, not the swirl of alienness which marked the smux, the bartle, and Yazz. Simply an emptiness, as if no one stood there at all. That was so frightening that, for a full moment, he shivered and strove to the edge even farther away. Yet when he opened the eyes he had squinted shut, there was a man like any other walking the Limits or the upper town.

He had heard tales – always told with gusto but never believed – of how, on some distant world, there were beings with the look of men but who were in truth machines. Those would even think when properly supplied with the right tapes, just as a ship could be guided, once in space, to a chosen world. Was he now fronting one of those fearsome things neither living nor dead?

Like their bargain with Dune, this other one was quickly struck, but, as the astrogator left, Maelen spoke softly, using a language Farree did not know. He heard harshness in the Lord-One Krip's quick answer. The Lady looked over her shoulder to where Farree crouched.

"Mind touch?"'

He knew what she meant and first shook his head and then, fearing she could not see, answered in words.

"There was nothing. Nothing at all!"

"A shield," Lord-One Krip said then, "and that is surely Guild. But if they knew us they also know that we would detect such at once and be warned off."

"A machine one?" Farree ventured.

"What do you know of such?" Lady Maelen asked.

"Only stories," he answered. "No one believes them true."

"Yet once such things were," she answered slowly. "Once the Thassas knew such. But also I do not understand why they would send us a well-shielded one."

"They may think that it is only with each other and with the animal ones we can communicate," Lord-One Krip said slowly. "Yet the Guild have the reputation of taking nothing and no one on trust. There are many races and species in space. The Zacanthans in their rolls of history have only a partial listing of such and their attributes both physical and mental. They did not even know of the Thassa until we met on Yiktor. There may be many others – even a race born with a natural mind shield. Still, it argues planning on their part. This is a warning, for it goes with all we know of the Guild."

The Thieves Guild had spread and entwined world after world – where star rovers went, sooner or later the Guild followed. They were reputed to be masters of strange knowledge and devices which they stole or bought before the Patrol realized that such existed.

Farree ran his tongue across his lips and then asked in a small voice: "Could it be known that time is of importance to your plans, Lord-One, and that you would chance taking whoever offered because of that?"

"Yes," Lord-One Krip replied, "that makes sense. However, these two may have defenses or weapons of which we know nothing. And to blast off with such aboard – "

Toggor moved. His eyestalks were all extended to the farthest limit and swung so that they pointed after the man who had just left.

A fuzzy picture in Farree's mind. One which the Lady Maelen must have picked up as quickly as the hunchback.

"He is not a machine—that one," she said. "The smux finds true life there and danger."

"Yazz, Bojor." The Lord-One looked to the two other animals.

"Live. Like Yazz. Live," answered that one at once. The bartle growled, sitting up on his broad and weighty haunches, making gestures of holding something in his front paws.

"I think," Lady Maelen said slowly, "that we may have our own warning alerts from directions which our new shipmates will not guess. They can accept animals performing because of threats or promises, but not little ones who share with us that true life of all that is equal in Molester's scales of being. We shall mount our safeguards. You have made your own lock installments on the cages?" She turned to Lord-One Krip.

"Yes; we shall test them this night. It will serve that our little ones are firmly housed and yet" – he smiled a little grimly – "that will be only a cover."

Farree had been in the ship before, but that had been a hurried visit and only to that section meant to house those the Lady Maelen called her "little ones." Though she used the same term for Farree himself, there was a difference which was subtle but which he had caught. He was perhaps as ignorant of worlds beyond this planet as the animals, or even more so, for those had roved the wilds far beyond the Limits. Yet to these two off-worlders he was common kin.

Now he lay in the bunk which had been assigned to him. For the off-worlders and their live companions had chosen to go within the ship though it was still fin down. However, what he was thinking had nothing to do with the events of the past two days. Rather he was caught up in what he had never experienced before: a waking dream of wonder. That was centered upon something he had seen in the Lady Maelen's quarters.

A cube which seemed transparent and clear of any content – one which was only slightly larger than what he could hold comfortably in his two hands. When the Lady touched it, there had come a swirl of color within as he watched in astonishment. He might have been poised in the air above another land – one so far different from the Limits that dream was all he could find to call it.