The wide-eyed chen seemed to notice that his jaw was hanging open. He closed it with an audible clack.

Fiben switched the ignition on and felt satisfied with the engine’s throaty roar. “Cast off,” he said. Then he smiled. “And thanks. Take good care of Tycho!”

The sailor blinked. He seemed about to decide to get angry when some of the chims who had followed Fiben caught up. One whispered in the boatman’s ear. The fisherman then grinned. He hurried to untie the boat’s tether and threw the rope back onto the foredeck. When Fiben awkwardly hit the pier backing up, the chim only winced slightly. “G-good luck,’ he managed to say.

“Yeah. Luck, Fiben,” Barnaby shouted.

Fiben waved and shifted the impellers into forward. He swung about in a wide arc, passing almost under the duraplast sides of the Gubru patrol craft. Up close it did not look quite so glistening white. In fact, the armored hull looked pitted and corroded. High, indignant chirps from the other side of the vessel indicated the frustration of the Talon Soldier crew.

Fiben spared them not a thought as he turned about and got his borrowed boat headed southward, toward the line of buoys that split the bay and kept the chims of Port Helenia away from the high, patron-level doings on the opposite shore.

Foamed and choppy from the wind, the water was cinerescent with the usual garbage the easterlies always brought in, this time of year — everything from leaves to almost transparent plate ivy parachutes to the feathers of molting birds. Fiben had to slow to avoid clots of debris as well as battered boats of all description crowded with chim sightseers.

He approached the barrier line at low speed and felt thousands of eyes watching him as he passed the last shipload, containing the most daring and curious of the Port Helenians.

Goodall, do I really know what I’m doing? he wondered. He had been acting almost on automatic so far. But now it came to him that he really was out of his depth here. What did he hope to accomplish by charging off this way? What was he going to do? Crash the ceremony? He looked at the towering starships across the bay, glistening in power and splendor.

As if he had any business sticking his half-uplifted nose into the affairs of beings from great and ancient clans! All he’d accomplish would be to embarrass himself, and probably his whole race for that matter.

“Gotta think about this,” he muttered. Fiben brought the boat’s engine down to idle as the line of buoys neared. He thought about how many people were watching him right now.

My people, he recalled. I … I was supposed to represent them.

Yes, but I ducked out, obviously the Suzerain realized its mistake and made other arrangements. Or the other Suzerain’s won, and I’d simply be dead meat if I showed up!

He wondered what they would think if they knew that, only days ago, he had manhandled and helped kidnap one of his own patrons, and his legal commander at that. Some race-representative!

Gailet doesn’t need the likes of me. She’s better off without me.

Fiben twisted the wheel, causing the boat to come about just short of one of the white buoys. He watched it go by as he turned.

It, too, looked less than new on close examination — somewhat corroded, in fact. But then, from his own lowly state, who was he to judge?

Fiben blinked at that thought. Now that was laying it on too thick!

He stared at the buoy, and slowly his lips curled back. Why… why you devious sons of bitches…

Fiben cut the impellers and let the engine drop back to idle. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands against his temples, trying to concentrate.

I was girding myself against another fear barrier…like the one at the city fence, that night. But this one is more subtle! It plays on my sense of my own unworthiness. It trades on my humility.

He opened his eyes and looked back at the buoy. Finally, he grinned.

“What humility?” Fiben asked aloud. He laughed and turned the wheel as he set the craft in motion again. This time when he headed for the barrier he did not hesitate, or listen to the doubts that the machines tried to cram into his head.

“After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?” The enemy had made a serious mistake here, Fiben knew as he left the buoys behind him and, with them, their artificially induced doubts. The resolution that flowed back into him now was fortified by its very contrast to the earlier depths. He approached the opposite headland wearing a fierce scowl of determination.

Something flapped against his knee. Fiben glanced down and saw the silvery ceremonial robe — the one he had found in the closet back at the old prison. He had crammed it under his belt, apparently, just before leaping atop Tycho and riding, pell-mell, for the harbor. No wonder people had been staring at him, back at the docks!

Fiben laughed. Holding onto the wheel with one hand, he wriggled into the silky garment as he headed toward a silent stretch of beach. The bluffs cut off any view of what was going on over on the sea side of the narrow peninsula. But the drone of still-descending aircraft was — he hoped — a sign that he might not be too late.

He ran the boat aground on a shelf of sparkling white sand, now made unattractive under a tidal wash of flotsam. Fiben was about to leap into the knee-high surf when he glanced back and noticed that something seemed to be going on back in Port Helenia. Faint cries of excitement carried over the water. The churning mass of brown forms at the dockside was now surging to the right.

He plucked up the pair of binoculars that hung by the capstan and focused them on the wharf area.

Chims ran about, many of them pointing excitedly eastward, toward the main entrance to town. Some were still running in that direction. But now more and more seemed to be heading the other way… apparently not so much in fear as in confusion. Some of the more excitable chims capered about. A few even fell into the water and had to be rescued by the more level-headed.

Whatever was happening did not seem to be causing panic so much as acute, near total bewilderment.

Fiben did not have time to hang around and piece to-

fether this added puzzle. By now he thought he understood is own modest powers of concentration.

Focus on just one problem at a time, he told himself. Get to Gailet. Tell her you’re sorry you ever left her. Tell her you’II never ever do it again.

That was easy enough even for him to understand.

Fiben found a narrow trail leading up from the beach. It was crumbling and dangerous, especially in the gusting winds. Still, he hurried. And his pace was held down only by the amount of oxygen his limited lungs and heart could pump.

The four of them made a strange-looking group, hurrying northward under overcast skies. Perhaps some little native animals looked up and stared at them, blinking in momentary astonishment before they ducked back into their burrows and swore off the eating of overripe seeds ever again.

To Uthacalthing, though, the forced inarch was something of a humiliation. Each of the others, it seemed, had advantages over him.

Kault puffed and huffed and obviously did not like the rugged ground. But once the hulking Thennanin got moving he kept up a momentum that seemed unstoppable.

As for Jo-Jo, well, the little chim seemed by now to be a creature of this environment. He was under strict orders from Uthacalthing never to knuckle-walk within sight of Kault — no sense in taking a chance with arousing the Thennanin’s suspicions — but when the terrain got too rugged he sometimes just scrambled over an obstacle rather than going around it. And over the long flat stretches, Jo-Jo simply rode Robert’s back.