They walked toward a dropshaft.

When Rod looked down it, the sight made him dizzy. Only the sight of people floating up and down in it made him realize that this was some Earth device which his people did not have in Old North Australia.

“Take a belt,” said C’mell quietly. “Do it as though you were used to it.”

He looked around. Only after she had taken a canvas belt, about fifteen centimeters wide, and was cinching it to her waist, did he see what she meant. He took one too and put it on. They waited while A’gentur ran up and down the racks of belts, looking for one small enough to fit him. C’mell finally helped him by taking one of normal size and looping it around his waist twice before she hooked it.

“Magnetic,” she murmured. “For the dropshafts.”

They did not take the main dropshaft.

“That’s for people only,” said C’mell.

The underpeople dropshaft was the same, except that it did not have the bright lights, the pumping of fresh air, the labelling of the levels, and the entertaining pictures to divert the passengers as they went up and down. This dropshaft, moreover, seemed to have more cargo than people in it. Huge boxes, bales, bits of machines, furniture and inexplicable bundles, each tied with magnetic belts and each guided by an under-person, floated up and down in the mysterious ever busy traffic of Old Earth.

Rod McBan, disguised as a cat, floated down the dropshaft to the strangest encounter which could have befallen any man of his epoch. C’mell floated down beside him. She clenched her skirt between her knees, so that it would not commit immodesties. A’gentur, his monkey hand lightly on C’mell’s shoulder, loved her soft red hair as it stood and moved with the up-draft which they themselves created; he looked forward to becoming E’ikasus again and he admired C’mell deeply, but love between the different strains of underpeople was necessarily platonic. Physiologically they could not breed outside their own stock and emotionally they found it hard to mesh deeply with the empathic needs of another form of life, however related it might be. E’ikasus therefore very truly and deeply wanted C’mell for his friend, and nothing more.

While they moved downward in relative peace, other people were concerned about them on various worlds.

“You, former Hon. Sec. of this government, are charged with going outside the limits of your onseckish duties and of attempting to commit mayhem or murder upon the person of one of Her Absent Majesty’s subjects, the said subject being Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan to the one-hundred-and-fifty-first generation; and you are further charged with the abuse of an official instrument of this Commonwealth government in designing and encompassing the said unlawful purpose, to wit, one mutated sparrow, serial number 0919487, specialty number 2328525, weighing forty-one kilograms and having a monetary value of 685 minicredits. What say you?”

Houghton Syme CXLIX buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

“Aunt Doris, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. I feel it.”

“Nonsense, Lavinia. He may be in trouble and we might not know. But with all that money, the government or the Instrumentality would use the Big Blink to send word of the change in status of this property. I don’t mean to sound cold-hearted, girl, but when there is this much property at stake, people act rapidly.”

“He is so dead.”

Doris was not one to discount the telepathic arts. She remembered how the Australians had gotten off the incarnate fury of Paradise VII. She went over to the cupboard and took from it a strangely tinted jar. “Do you know what this is?” said she to Lavinia.

The girl forced a smile past her desperate inward feelings. “Yes,” she said. “Ever since I was no bigger than a mini-elephant, people have told me that jar was ‘do not touch’.”

“Good girl, then, if you haven’t touched it!” said Aunt Doris dryly. “It’s a mixture of stroon and Paradise VII honey.”

“Honey,” cried Lavinia. “I thought no one ever went back to that horrible place.”

“Some do,” said Lavinia. “It seems that some Earth forms have taken over and are still living there. Including bees. The honey has powers on the human mind. It is a strong hypnotic. We mix it with stroon to make sure it is safe.”

Aunt Doris put a small spoon into the jar, lifted, spun the spoon to pick up the threads of heavy honey, and handed the spoon to Lavinia. “Here,” said she, “take this and lick it off. Swallow it all down.”

Lavinia hesitated and then obeyed. When the spoon was clean she licked her lips and handed the clean spoon back to Aunt Doris, who put it aside for washing up.

Aunt Doris ceremoniously put the jar back on the high shelf of the cupboard, locked the cupboard, and put the key in the pocket of her apron.

“Let’s sit outside,” said she to Lavinia.

“When’s it going to happen? The trance — the visions — whatever this stuff brings on?”

Doris laughed her weary rational laugh. “Oh, that! Sometimes nothing at all happens. In any event, it won’t hurt you, girl. Let’s sit on the bench. I’ll tell you if you start looking strange to me.”

They sat on the bench, doing nothing. Two police ornithopters, flying just under the forever grey clouds, quietly watched the station of Doom. They had been doing this ever since Rod’s computer showed him how to win all that money: the fortune was still piling up, almost faster than it could be computed. The bird-engines were lazy and beautiful as they flew. The operators had synchronized the flapping of the two sets of wings, so that they looked like rukhs doing a ballet. The effect caught the eyes of both Lavinia and Aunt Doris.

Lavinia suddenly spoke in a clear, sharp, demanding voice, quite unlike her usual tone: “It’s all mine, isn’t it?”

Doris breathed softly, “What, my dear?”

“The Station of Doom. I’m one of the heiresses, anyhow, aren’t I?” Lavinia pursed her lips in a proud prim smug smile which would have humiliated her if she had been in her right mind.

Aunt Doris said nothing. She nodded silently.

“If I marry Rod I’ll be Missus and Owner McBan, the richest woman who ever lived. But if I do marry him, he’ll hate me, because he’ll think it’s for his money and his power. But I’ve loved Rod, loved him specially because he couldn’t hier or spiek. I’ve always known that he would need me someday, not like my Daddy, singing his crazy sad proud songs forever and ever! But how can I marry him now… ?”

Whispered Doris, very gently, very insinuatingly: “Look for Rod, my dear. Look for Rod in that part of your mind which thought he was dead. Look for Rod, Lavinia, look for Rod.”

Lavinia laughed happily, and it was the laugh of a small child.

She stared at her feet, at the sky, at Doris — looking right through her.

Her eyes seemed to clear. When she spoke, it was in her normal adult voice:

“I see Rod, someone has changed him into a cat man, just like the pictures we’ve seen of underpeople. And there’s a girl with him — a girl, Doris — and I can’t be jealous of him being with her. She is the most beautiful thing that ever lived on any world. You ought to see her hair, Doris. You ought to see her hair. It is like a bushel of beautiful fire. Is that Rod? I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t see.” She sat on the bench, looking straight at Doris and seeing nothing, but weeping copiously.

Aunt Doris started to get up; it was about time for the poor thing to be led to her bed, so that she could sleep off the hypnotic of Paradise VII.