It was after midnight when he rose and quietly slipped on his boots. The tavern was as silent as the town, which had died after the sounding of the curfew. Within moments the streets had been deserted. Now, lying behind closed shutters, the inhabitants waited until the dawn.

A board creaked as he left the room and he paused, listening. He heard nothing and moved on to halt at Carina's door. Beyond the panel he heard the soft, regular breathing of a person asleep and moved on to where stairs ran down into shrouded darkness.

Above there had been ghost-light from the stars filtering through cracks to create a pale, nacreous glow but down in the lower rooms of the tavern even that illumination was missing. Dumarest eased himself forward, hands extended, ears strained to catch the whisper of echoes. Like a blind man he moved toward the remembered door, found it, felt at the bolt which held it fast. It slipped back beneath his hand, the door gaping, closing again behind him as he passed outside.

The night was blazing with stars.

They covered the firmament with a golden glitter, gilded by the drifting spores which hued the air. Sheets and curtains of luminescence marred by the ebon blotches of interstellar dust. The heart of the Zaragoza Cluster with its multitude of worlds. Planets which had offered safety of a kind but a safety which could turn into a trap for a man without money. For a moment Dumarest looked at the burning stars, then moved away. What he searched for was not to be found in the cluster.

The street behind Nisbet's shop was as deserted as the rest of the town and Dumarest climbed the wall, dropping on the far side to wait, crouching, as he searched the area. Nothing. The windows shone with the dull gleam of reflected starlight and that was all. Rising, he moved to the big door facing the yard, tested it, moved on, when it remained fast, to the windows which ran beside it, found one that yielded beneath his hand.

A moment later he was inside a room which smelt of resin and spirit and gum and sawdust.

This was a storeroom with shelves supporting rows of bottles, cans, flasks of various sizes. Bins held rags and others tufted cotton. Drawers contained sheets of fine paper coated with dustlike abrasives. One corner smelt of assorted oils.

The door next to it opened beneath his hand and Dumarest moved softly through a thicker darkness to another which opened on a room holding different smells. A third and he was among inks and papers and the paraphernalia of an office. The desk was unlocked. By the starlight streaming through the window he looked at papers taken from its drawers.

They were in no sort of obvious order, and he frowned as he tried to determine the reference system used. From the look of things they had been stuffed at random into their compartments: lists of material purchased, credits extended to various workers, sums received and balances struck-normal accounting to be found on any world using money as a means of exchange.

He delved on, finding some elaborate designs traced on thick parchments in faded inks: geometric patterns which had little to commend them aside from their complexity. Others were of living creatures, together with finely detailed depictions of joints and corner-pieces, dadoes, architraves, mitres and other examples of the woodworker's art. As he reached for another drawer he heard the soft scuffle of someone coming over the wall.

Dumarest froze, staring through the window, seeing in the golden starlight an indistinct shape which ran lightly across the yard in a direct path to the window by which he had entered. An apprentice, he guessed, and the reason for the unfastened window was plain. The youth had broken curfew, leaving by the window he had left ajar for easy readmittance. At the door of the office Dumarest rested his ear against the panel, listening to the soft pad of feet, the rasp of the inner door, the dying sounds of footsteps mounting the stairs.

Back at the desk he continued his search. The final drawer yielded nothing of value and he stood, searching the office with his eyes, trying to put himself in Nisbet's place. Work in hand would mean the relevant papers would be within easy reach. The desk was the obvious place but would a craftsman, impatient with office routine, follow the normal pattern? The filing system he used was unique to himself and relied wholly on memory. He had wasted time following accepted patterns.

Where then?

Dumarest stepped from the office and into the area outside where the air was heavy with the scent of wood and lacquer. The box rested beneath a high row of narrow panes, starlight touching a shelf, the folder lying on it. The first page held a printed slip, the second a list of specifications, the next was covered with designs, shapes which formed familiar symbols.

The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins and next the Crab, the Lion shines, the Virgin and the Scales. The Scorpion, Archer and Sea Goat, the Man that holds the Watering Pot, the Fish with shining scales.

A mnemonic learned on a distant world. Symbols which represented the constellations as seen from Earth. One had led him to the Original People. He had seen them all when finding the spectrum of a forgotten sun.

These signs of the zodiac had decorated the box Carina had depicted.

Whoever had ordered them must know of Earth.

Chapter Six

Carina had been wrong; the ships began to arrive in days, not weeks, but the passengers they carried were not interested in the Sporing. They were the forefront of the flood to come, getting in early so as to complete their business. Shrewd-eyed men interested in local crafts hired rafts to carry them to outlying communes where they would live as guests, checking the times available, buying, trading, striking mutually satisfying bargains-dealers and entrepreneurs of all kinds. To control them and the crowds yet to come the Fathers of Caval had hired professional guards who now patrolled the streets, keeping the peace with words when possible, force when not.

"Serpents in a fair garden, Earl." Nubar Kusche, plump, bland, with graying hair roached and set with painstaking care over eyes which moved like liquid metal in time-stained sockets, shook his head as he stared down into the street from the balcony. "Vipers which betray the illusion of a Utopia. A pity that gentle consideration is too delicate a bloom to survive without protection."

Dumarest made no comment, staring as had Kusche at the street below, the environs beyond. The field was now busy and to one side the striped awnings of booths sprouted like a thrusting mass of exotic fungi. A carnival was to be expected on any world at such a time: a home for the gamblers and touts, the entertainers and artists who would harvest the fruits of the occasion. A lure for the local youth and a temptation the elders could have done without.

"Life," mused Kusche. "It goes on and who would stop it? But you are not drinking, my friend. Come, now, let me fill your glass!"

The act was done even as he spoke, the glint of his eyes matching the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. Kusche radiated an easy bonhomie and had shared a table with Dumarest the previous evening. He seemed to know all about Caval.

"Look at them!" He gestured toward a raft which lifted from the edge of the field and headed south. "Agents of the Romesh Syndicate, without a doubt. Heading into the Muuain and the Elton Hamlets. They hope to buy beads carved with delectable miniatures and nose-stones fashioned in the likeness of tiny birds. A forlorn quest."

"Because someone has got in first?"

"No. The craftsmen of the area have suffered this past season from an affliction of the eyes. Nothing serious, a form of ophthalmia, but it precluded fine and delicate work."