"How long?"

"It has been three years since the growth covered his farm."

"And Delmayer?"

"He killed himself when it became obvious that the land could not be reclaimed. He tried, we all tried, but nothing can eliminate the thorge once it takes hold." Quendis's voice was thick with rage. "Delmayer was a good man. He fed over a thousand dependents and carried as many displaced workers from other farms to the north. What else could he do but die with honor when they reached toward him with empty hands?"

Dumarest stepped down the slope to where reaching shoots sought to cover the naked stone. Stooping he tore free a thin growth. It came from one as thick as his finger which sprouted in turn from one as thick as his arm. The stem was fibrous, hard to break, vicious with thorns. A thick juice oozed from the broken end. A drop fell on his hand and he wiped it clean as he felt the sting of acid. From the juice came a fetid odor accentuating the miasma rising from the ground at his feet.

"We can't get rid of it," said Quendis as Dumarest straightened. "The third year stems are as thick as a man and the speed of growth is phenomenal. It seeds throughout the year aside from four months in winter and leeches the soil where it grows. It can be cut but the acid eats into the blades. If we burn it the flames release a poisonous vapor which sears the lungs and blisters the flesh. We can drag it out by the roots but if a fragment is left it grows again. It's a weed," he explained. "A mutated pest. Against it cultivated plants haven't a chance."

Dumarest looked toward the buried mansion. The growth must be high for the swell to be so insignificant Obeying natural law the shoots would struggle to reach the sun, which meant that the lower levels would be free of leaf and thin shoots. A band of determined men could, perhaps, fight their way through the massed stems.

Quendis shook his head when he mentioned it. "No, Earl, it can't be done."

"Why not? I have money and can pay. A hundred men with saws and axes should be able to cut a path. We could use lasers if they are available and wear protective clothing."

"You don't understand," said the grower patiently. "It's all been tried. The house is over a mile from where we stand and, no matter how many men you employ, only a few can attack the thorge at any one time. Cutting the stems will release the upper growth. More, it will release the juice and give rise to lethal vapors. Burning with lasers the same. If you made ten yards in a day you would be lucky. Within a week the new growth would have blocked the path behind you."

There is another way," said Dumarest tightly. "I could hire rafts and fly out to where the house is. Lasers could burn the area clear."

"And what do you hope to find? An empty house filled with things of antiquity and items of value? Rooms untouched and waiting your investigation?" Quendis mastered his impatience; how could this stranger understand? "All you would find is a heap of disintegrating rubble. A mound of crumbling brick and stone laced with roots and rotting with acid. What the thorge touches it destroys. Whatever you hoped to find in the mansion of Delmayer is no longer there. It would be a waste of time and money to search." He paused and added, "And there is something else. I hate to mention it, but it cannot be forgotten. You have seven days before you must report back to the landing field."

"So?"

"It would take that long to assemble the rafts and men. Longer to burn clear the area. I'm sorry, Earl there simply isn't enough time."

Time! Dumarest looked down at his hands, now clenched into fists. Again he was too late. The knowledge Delmayer had owned, assuming he had owned it, was lost. Had been lost for years. But surely Carl would have known?

"He left five years ago," said Quendis when he put the question. "Shortly after the thorge first appeared. He was brilliant and guessed what must happen unless we found a defense against it. His message told me that he had failed to discover a weapon. Three worlds at least do not possess the answer. It was a hopeless quest from the start."

Dumarest was impatient. "This growth would be easy to destroy. Short life radioactives would do it. You could dust the area and within a year burn the dead vines. The ash would help to fertilize the soil which you could then restock with bacteria and low life forms. Within five years you could be growing selected crops."

Quendis, not looking at Dumarest, said, slowly, "Are you suggesting that we kill the land?"

"Not kill it, cleanse it."

"With radioactives?"

"Yes, if necessary, why not?"

He was a stranger, Quendis reminded himself, fighting his anger. He could not know of the terrible thing he suggested, the ingrained horror of what he proposed. To kill the land! To burn it lifeless with the invisible fire of radiation! To kill every seed and worm, every scrap of potential life, the very bacteria even!

The land which contained the sweat and blood, the body and bone of countless predecessors.

Watching him, Dumarest sensed his anger, the inner turmoil of his thoughts. Quietly he said, "I am a stranger unused to your ways. If I have given offense I apologize."

"There is no offense." Quendis inflated his chest and dabbed at the sweat on face and neck. He was too old to suffer such anger and yet, now, he was glad of the tolerance age had brought. A younger man would have struck without thinking. Struck and, perhaps, died. Dumarest did not look the type of man who would take a blow without retaliation. "The thought of killing the land is repulsive to us," he explained. "It would be wise not to mention the use of radioactives again."

"I understand." Dumarest turned and looked once more at the sea of vegetation, the distant swell covering the house. "Is there no natural enemy you could use? A parasite or a mold?"

"That is what Carl was seeking. If it exists at all it must be on the world of Technos."

"The ones who started the growth?"

"You know?" Quendis looked at Dumarest then shook his head. "You are guessing but it is a shrewd guess. We were a happy people tending the land and spending a generation to perfect the color of a rose. Production was high and we exported the surplus; dehydrated foods, perfumes, liqueurs, seeds of a thousand varieties. Then Technos demanded that we supply men to help in a war against Gest. We refused. A month later the thorge appeared, at first only in the most northern sector, but it was enough. It spread like fire and, as we tried to fight it, there came the warning that unless we submitted to the rule of Technos the whole planet would be seeded with the vile growth. And so we became a tributary world ruled by those who wear the red and black."

"And the tribute?"

"Men and women," said Quendis bitterly. "A thousand of each. Young, fit and virile."

"To be paid each year?"

"When they demand." Quendis thought of Cleon and bit his lip against the emotional agony. "At first only once in a year, then twice, then three times and now four. Soon it will be more. They drain our youth and leave us, old men to tend dwindling lands, bankrupt growers and dispossessed workers. Soon we shall have nothing."

He turned, remembering that he had a guest, conscious of the rule of hospitality.

"Come," he said, leading the way to the raft. "You must not allow me to bore you with our problems. It is time I welcomed you to my house."

* * *

It was a big place with massive walls of mortared stone, beamed with foot-thick timbers, many-storied and strewn with a clutter of outhouses, workshops, stores and barns. The center of a compact village which, as far as Dumarest could see, was entirely self-supporting.

Sitting at one end of the table, close to his host, he looked over the assembly as they ate their evening meal. The food was good, heaped plates accompanied by jugs of wine and beer, perfectly cooked and dispensed with a lavish hand. The people bore the stamp of similarity, olive skinned, liquid eyed, happy in an unsophisticated way. Inbred, he guessed, content to live close to nature, eating well, working hard when the occasion demanded but unreliable if it came to hardship. A soft and protected people embraced by a feudal system, serfs in fact if not in name.