"Earl, you need food."

"Later," said Dumarest. "First we must see the captain."

He joined them where they waited in the salon, a short man with broad shoulders and a face seamed and lined like a dried fruit. His eyes were splinters of amber glass set beneath bushy brows. His hair was a grizzled cap hugging a peaked skull. His uniform was of fine material, bright with carefully tended insignia. On his left shoulder rode a thing from a nightmare.

A creature like a crab, spined, claws serrated with vicious indentations, an extension like a segmented tail over the rounded shoulders, smaller appendages like miniature hands which served to carry food to the snapping mandibles. The eyes were like jewels set on hornlike promontories.

Captain Lon Tuvey was an unusual man.

"So." He paused in the doorway looking at Sardia then at Dumarest who had helped himself to a cup of basic. "It appears we have a stowaway."

"A passenger," corrected the woman. "Earl is a passenger."

"Earl?" His eyes narrowed as she gave the rest of the name. "Earl Dumarest. No such person is listed on my records. No such person was seen to board the Sivas. No such person has the right to be on my ship." His voice was a drone of mechanical precision. "As far as I'm concerned he is nothing but a stowaway. Need I tell you the penalty for riding a vessel without permission?"

"I know the penalty," said Dumarest. "But you won't have to evict me. I can pay."

"And if I refuse to carry you?" The amber eyes flickered as Dumarest set down the cup. "You recognize my authority?"

"Not if it means going meekly through a port."

"No," said Tuvey. "I didn't think you would. Well, we have no cause to argue, if you have money all is well." He glanced at the woman. "You travel together? As I thought. The price will be double that arranged."

Dumarest said coldly, "I'm not interested in meeting an artist."

"Then you shouldn't be on my ship." Lifting a hand Tuvey drummed his fingernails on the carapace of his pet. "And if you want to argue the matter both the steward and the handler are, at this moment, covering you with lasers."

And somewhere would be the navigator and the engineer with, perhaps, an assistant or two.

"No," said Dumarest. "I don't want to argue."

"A wise man and your wisdom has bought you a bonus. I shall not return to Juba to discover if you are the man the guards are looking for. The cost and inconvenience wouldn't cover the reward-not when you consider the lost passage money." Again his fingers made small drumming sounds as they impacted the shell. Watching, Dumarest saw the segmented tail lift and the spined legs stiffen as if the creature enjoyed the tapping. "It does." Tuvey had guessed the curiosity. Borol appreciates the rhythm. I call him that because he reminds me of an officer I once knew. He fell into a vat of petrifying liquids and he, too, had a hard shell."

Dumarest said dryly, "But not for long."

"No." Tuvey set down the creature which scuttled into a corner to turn and freeze and watch with unblinking eyes. "You've been riding Low?"

"Yes." A lie but it would serve.

"And so need building up. Take all the basic you need-it is included in the price." As would be the quick-time they would be given later, the magic of the drug slowing down metabolism as slow-time quickened it. A convenience which shortened the tedium of long journeys. "How did you get aboard?"

"In the trunk." Dumarest met the shrewd amber of the eyes. If Tuvey thought he was lying he gave no sign. "How long will it take us to reach Ath?"

"Does it matter?" The captain smiled as he glanced at Sardia. "With such a companion what importance has time? Rest, eat, relax and enjoy yourselves. How many have such an opportunity?"

A chance to do as he suggested-but even with normal hours shrunken to apparent seconds, time needed filling. Talk did it, whispers in the darkness as they lay close, memories recounted as they sat in gentle illumination with the pleasure of wine adding to their intimacy.

Sardia spoke of her youth, of the harsh discipline of the Corps Mantage, of artists she had known and now would never see again.

"Amil was the best, Earl. A dancer infused with the flame of genius. A man dedicated to the art. When he was on stage not a whisper could be heard from the audience. On Chrachery, when a man coughed, he was almost killed for what the others chose to regard as an insult. And, when he finally died, the queue to see him lying in state stretched for miles. It took days for them all to pay their last homage and each day fresh blooms are placed on his monument."

"You knew him?"

"He died in my arms." She fell silent, brooding, and he knew better than to break into her mood. Instead he sipped more basic; the fluid sickly with glucose, laced with vitamins, thick with protein. A cupful was the normal ration for a day.

Thoughtfully he studied the woman.

Amil had died in her arms and the man had been the hero of a world if what she said was true. Which meant that she, herself, must have achieved a high degree of fame. And, while she lacked the boyishness of a young girl, she was far from old.

"Even so I'm too old," she said when he put the question. "Nothing is more pathetic than a dancer who clings too long to a fading reputation. I could have used drugs but such things are crutches and being at the top makes you a target for those eager to climb. Then Amil died and Verecunda hurt herself and I decided it was time to make a graceful exit and take up something else." She shook her head, dismissing ghosts. "And you, Earl? What about you?"

"I travel."

"And?" She shook him, her hand warm against his bare shoulder. They had loved and were resting and it was a time for reminiscences. "Your childhood, what about that? And what made you leave home?"

She frowned as he told her, knowing he was skipping, leaving much unsaid and conscious of the gaps. A bleak and harsh childhood, a time of savage necessity with hunger as a constant companion. The need which had set him wandering to find a ship on which he had stowed away. A captain who had been more than kind.

"He could have evicted me," said Dumarest. "Instead, he let me work my passage and took care of me as best he could."

A surrogate father who had died to leave the youngster to wander alone. Moving ever deeper into the heart of the galaxy where worlds were close and ships plentiful. To regions where even the name of Earth had been forgotten.

"And now you want to find it," she said. "You want to get back home. But, Earl, are you sure?"

"About the name?" He had recognized her tone. "I'm sure."

"A world of legend," she murmured. "A myth-even the name makes it unreal. Earth! Why not call it dirt or soil or sand? And you have been searching for it how long?"

Too long, riding High when he could and Low when he couldn't; locked in a casket designed for the transportation of beasts, doped, frozen, ninety percent dead and risking the fifteen percent death rate for the sake of cheap transportation. A bad way to ride, one which robbed the body of fat and excess tissue-no wonder Tuvey had jumped to that conclusion.

"Earl!" Her hand caressed his naked flesh. Already he was filling out, the basic he took together with added ingestors replacing the starved tissues. "Such a hard life."

Had there been no comfort in it at all? No beauty?

Beauty enough, she decided; the vistas of new worlds, the panorama of space itself, the planetary spectacles which tourists paid highly to see. And there would have been comfort in the form of women if nothing else. His masculinity would have attracted them as a flame attracted moths and they would have flocked to him after his fight in the ring.

She remembered again how he had looked when facing Yhma, the hard savagery of his face, the cruel mouth, the deathly eyes. Eyes matched by the cold flicker of naked steel, the body a symphony of quick and graceful movement. And then the bursting effort of the finale when, as graceful as a dancer, he had cut and cut again to disarm and release the jetting fountain of a human life. A gushing stream which had lifted the crowd to its feet screaming approbation.