--How much would you say a house like this cost?

Oh, about a thousand stars, not including furnishings. Furnishings would cost twice that. Rugs, ninety stars if you bought one and let it spread. Two housecleaners, mated, fifty stars.

--And how much to put a basement under such a house?

--Mist Demons, what an idea! Basements have to be dug by hand, by human beings! It'd cost twenty thousand stars easily. You could build a school for that. Who would ever think of digging a basement under an architectural coral house?

--Who indeed? Jesus Pietro stepped briskly to the door. "Major Jansen!"

The sequel was likely to be messy. Jesus Pietro retired to the flying office while a team went in with an echo sounder. Yes, there was a large open space under the house. Major Chin wanted to find the entrance, but that might take all night, and the sounds might warn the colonists. Jesus Pietro sat firmly on his curiosity and ordered explosives. It was messy. The rebels had put together some ingenious devices from materials anyone would have considered harmless. Two men died before sleepy-gas grenades could be used. When all was quiet, Jesus Pietro followed the demolition teams into the basement. They found one of the unconscious rebels leaning on a dead-man switch. They traced the leads to a homemade bomb big enough to blow house and basement to bits. While they disconnected the bomb, Jesus Pietro studied the man, making a mental note to ask him if he'd chickened out. He'd found that they often did. Behind one wall was a car, a three-year-old four-seater model with a bad scrape on the ground-effect skirt. Jesus Pietro could see no way to get it out of the basement, and neither could anyone else. The house must have been formed over it. Of course, thought Jesus Pietro; they dug the basement then grew the house over it. He had his men cut away the wall so that the car could be removed later if it was thought worthwhile. They'd practically have to remove the house. There was a flight of steps with a trapdoor at the top. Jesus Pietro, examining the small bomb under the trapdoor, congratulated himself (pointedly, in Major Chin's hearing) on not allowing Major Chin to search for the entrance. He might have found it. Someone removed the bomb and opened the trapdoor. Above was the living room. An asymmetrical section of mutated grass rug had reluctantly tom away and come up with the door. When the door was lowered, it would grow back within twenty minutes. After the dead and unconscious had been filed away in patrol wagons, Jesus Pietro walked among them, comparing the faces with his final stack of photos. He was elated. With the exception of one man, he had collected Harry Kane and his entire guest list. The organ banks would be supplied for years. Not only would the crew have a full supply, which they always did anyway, but there would be spare parts for exceptional servants of the regime; i.e., for civil servants such as Jesus Pietro and his men. Even the colonists would benefit. It was not at all unusual for the Hospital to treat a sick but deserving colonist if the medical supplies were sufficient. The Hospital treated everyone they could. It reminded the colonists that the crew ruled in their name and had their interests at heart. And the Sons of Earth was dead. All but one man, and from his picture he wasn't old enough to be dangerous. Nonetheless Jesus Pietro had his picture tacked to the Hospital bulletin boards and sent a copy to the newscast station with the warning that he was wanted for questioning. It was not until dawn, when he was settling down to sleep, that he remembered who belonged to that face. Matthew Keller's nephew, six years older than when he'd pulled that cider trick. He looked just like his uncle.

The rain stopped shortly before dawn, but Matt didn't know it. Sheltered from the rain by a cliff and by a thick clump of watershed trees, he slept on. The cliff was the Beta-Gamma cliff. He'd fetched UP against it sometime last night, dizzy and bruised and wet and winded. He could have collapsed there or tried running parallel to the cliff. He had chosen to collapse. If Implementation found him, he'd never awaken, and he had known it as he went to sleep. He had been too exhausted to care. He woke about ten with a ferocious headache. Every separate muscle hurt from running and from sleeping on bare ground. His tongue felt like the entire Implementation police force had marched over it in sweat socks. He stayed on his back, looking up into the dark trees his ancestors had called pines, and tried to remember. So much to begin and end in one night. The people seemed to crowd around him. Hood, Laney, the four tall men, the kid who drank behind the bar, the laughing man who stole crew cars, Polly, Harry Kane, and a forest of anonymous elbows and shouting voices. All gone. The man whose scar he wore. The woman who'd left him flat. The genial mastermind-bartender. And Laney! How could he have lost Laney? They were gone. Over the next few years they might reappear in the form of eyes, lengths of artery and vein, grafts of hair-bearing scalp ... By now the police would be looking for Matt himself. He sat up, and every muscle screamed. He was naked. Implementation must have found his clothes in Laney's room. Could they match the clothes to him? And if they couldn't, they'd still wonder how a man came to be wandering stark naked in open countryside. On the pedwalks of Earth there were licensed nudists, and on Wunderland you didn't need a license; but on the Plateau there was no substitute for clothing. He couldn't turn himself in. By now he'd never prove he wasn't a rebel. He'd have to get clothes, somehow, and hope they weren't looking for him already. He surged to his feet, and it hit him again. Laney. Laney in the dark, Laney looking at him in the lamplit bed. Polly, the girl with the secret. Hood, first name Jayhawk. A wave of sickness caught him, and he doubled over, retching. He stopped the spasms by sheer willpower. His skull was a throbbing drum. He straightened and walked to the edge of the watershed forest. To right and left the watershed trees stretched along the base of the Beta-Gamma cliff. Beta Plateau above him, unreachable except by the bridge, which must be miles to the left. Before him, a wide meadow with a few grazing goats. Beyond that, houses. Houses in all directions, thickly clustered. His own was perhaps four miles away. He'd never reach it without being stopped. How about Harry's house? Laney had said there was a hiding place. And the ones who left before the raid .... some of them might have returned. They could help him. But would they?

He'd have to try it. He might reach Harry's house, crawling through the grass. The luck of Matt Keller might hold that far. He'd never reach his own.

His luck held: the strange luck that seemed to hide Matt Keller when he didn't want to be noticed. He reached the house two hours later. His knees and belly were green and itchy from the grass. The grounds about the house were solidly spread with wheel tracks. All of Implementation must have been in on the raid. Matt saw no guards, but he went carefully in case they were inside. Implementation guards or rebel guards, he could still be shot. Though a guard might hesitate to shoot him, --he'd want to ask questions first. Like: "Wbere's your pants, buddy9"

Nobody was inside. A dead or sleeping family of housecleaners lay against one wall, beneath their looted nest. Dead, probably, or drugged. Housecleaners hated, light; they did their work at night. The rug showed a gaping hole that reached down through indoor grass and architectural coral to a well-furnished hole in the ground. The living-room walls were spotted with explosion marks and mercy-bullet streaks. So was the basement, when Matt climbed down to look.