“Whut’ja expect?” A lean, scarred man in faded coveralls, hands handcuffed behind him, slouched forward in front of two toughs in business tunics. “A’ter all, he wint for me with a knife!”

“Y’ c’n tell Sard about it in th’ mornin’.” One tough prodded him. “Git along, now.”

The scarred one snarled, and they passed across the end of the corridor. The reflection from the handlamp wavered over the wall to Sam’s right, and was gone. Dar held his breath till their footsteps had faded away, then let it out in a gusty sigh. Instantly, Sam’s finger pressed over his lips, then was gone, and she was tugging on his hand again.

They turned right at the end of the corridor, and went on.

So it went, for what seemed the better part of a day. Dar was amazed at the sharpness of her hearing. Twice she pushed them into hiding in time for someone passing by to miss them, when Dar hadn’t heard the faintest sound until after they were in hiding. And she never led him past an occupied cell. How could she figure out where to go?

Then, finally, she dropped down to kneel; Dar almost fell over her, but he groped back just in time. He wondered what she was doing until he heard a very faint click. Then, slowly, a slit of light appeared, and widened into a narrow rectangle that widened to a door. They stepped out into a starlit night; the door slid quietly shut behind that.

“How did you manage that?” Dar whispered. “The Labyrinth couldn’t’ve been worse!”

“This was nothing,” she snorted. “You should’ve seen the government building where I used to work. Come on!”

She set out at a long, catlike stride that Dar had to stretch to keep up with. They’d come out of the side of a hillock; as they rounded it, they saw nothing but a level plain, broken by the occasional outcrop, stretching away into the distance. At its limit, a feeble gleam marked Haskerville.

“Just like the early days,” Dar sighed, “when the Wolmen still thought we were enemies and I had to be ready to hide, fast, whenever I went out trading!”

“Oh.” Sam eyed him sideways. “You’ve been on the run in open country before?”

Dar nodded. “The main principle is to stay away from the roads, and stay near whatever cover there is. And, of course, if something moves, you hit the ground fast, and worry later about whether it’s dangerous or good to eat. Here, I’ll show you some of the fine points.”

He moved off through the long grass without a breath of sound. Sam shook her head and sighed, then went after him.

As the sky lightened with false dawn, Dar started to sneak across the last yard that separated dirt track from paved Haskerville street.

Sam caught his shoulder. “Act nonchantly, gnappie. You go sneaking around like that, the first citizen who spots you’ll blow the whistle.”

Dar turned back. “So who’s going to be awake to see me?”

“Agreed. So why sneak?”

Dar sighed and gave up.

So they strolled into town like a couple of late-night revelers returning to their hotel rooms.

“Any idea where we’re going?” Dar asked. “With the authorities and the Underground after us, we’re kinda short on hideouts.”

“A point,” Sam admitted. “In this town, I wouldn’t even trust a cheap hotel… What’s that?”

Dar stopped, turning his head from side to side, and saw nothing. He strained his ears, but all he heard was a hiss of wind.

“Over there.” Sam pointed towards a shopfront a block to her left. “Come on.”

She set off toward the shop. After the episode in the jail-tunnels, Dar wasn’t about to dispute her hearing. He followed.

They had come into a shabbier section of Haskerville. The houses were big, but they were simple frame dwellings—no half-timbering and stucco—and looked somewhat infirm. Most of them were overdue for a coat of paint—the older part of town, at a guess, built before the planet had enough surplus to worry about aesthetics in architecture.

Someone came out of the shopfront they were heading for, and turned down the street away from them. He/she was bald, and wore a gray, loose coverall.

“I think,” Sam said, with a catch to her voice, “we’ve struck paydirt.”

Dar could see her point—and now he could hear the trace she’d picked up: a low mutter of conversation, underscored by the ripple of a string instrument and a flute.

Sam swung the door open. They stepped into a room decorated in Late-Modern Junkyard. The walls were plain pastel-painted plastiboard, decorated with hangings of knotted, brightly colored twine, some of which held potted plants. The tables were plastic delivery drums, and the “chairs” were tree stumps, somewhat leveled off on the bottom. There was a counter against one wall; Dar recognized a section of it—it had “Wolmar” rolled across it. The far end was topped by an arcane plastic contraption that gave off clouds of steam and a rich, spicy aroma.

Most of the tables were filled, and all the patrons had shaved heads and loose gray coveralls. So, for that matter, did the people behind the counter. The musicians, on a small raised platform at the far end, wore the same attire.

Dar paused just inside the doorway, feeling a prickling along the back of his neck. He couldn’t help it; he felt as though he’d just stepped into a village populated by a tribe he hadn’t met, who might or might not be hostile.

“Don’t worry,” Sam murmured, “you’re with me.”

She sauntered over to the counter. A girl who looked enough like her to make Dar rub his eyes, came over and said, “Yeah?” in a neutral tone.

“Two cups,” Sam said, and Dar felt in his purse for nails. The girl turned to the arcane contraption, picked up a cup, and pressed a valve; then she turned back to them with two steaming mugs. “New here.”

“Am,” Sam confirmed. “Just in from Wolmar.”

Panic jammed Dar’s stomach up toward his throat. Why not just send up a rocket that’d explode into the words, “Here’re the suspects!”

But the girl’s face came alive. “The prison planet? Where they’re oppressing the natives? Hey, tell me about it!”

“Yeah, me too!” A tall, lanky man lounged up to lean on the bar beside Sam.

“Wolmar? I want to hear this!”

“Hey! The real word?”

In thirty seconds, they were surrounded by a small crowd. Dar kept trying to edge closer and closer to the counter, and to glance over both shoulders at once; but Sam launched happily into an account of her tour of Wolmar. Dar was amazed at her accuracy; under equivalent conditions, he couldn’t have resisted the temptation to color the tale a little, probably putting in a bevy of scantily clad maidens and a hair-raising escape from a bloodthirsty tribe or two; but Sam stuck to reporting what she’d seen and heard, introducing Dar as her guide, which won him a look of respect, then glares of scorn when she mentioned his being a trader, then looks of awe when she explained his teaching function.

“You mean it’s not really a prison colony?”

Sam shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it. They’ve all been sentenced to go there.”

“They’re not really oppressing the natives?” The asker sounded almost disappointed.

“No—but look what they are doing!” Sam fairly glowed with missionary fervor as she went into an explanation of Cholly’s educational program. Dar listened, enthralled. He hadn’t known he was that much of a hero.

“Hey—it sounds like heaven,” said one Hume, with a shaky laugh.

“Yeah. What crime do I have to commit to get sent there?” another joked; but the laughter that followed had a rather serious echo.

“Well, don’t jump too soon.” Sam leaned on the counter and pushed her cup over for a refill. “The Bureau of Otherworldly Affairs sent out a new governor.”

Dar was delighted at the groan.

“Bastards always gotta foul up something good when they find it,” muttered one Angry Young Man.

“Establishments can’t stand progress,” growled another.