All the time I’d been off Darkover, it had been dead. Dormant. Hidden between blade and hilt of the heirloom sword, the proximity of the strong matrix made me tremble. Off-world it was an inert crystal. Now it was alive, with a strange, living warmth.

Most matrices are harmless. Bits of metal, or crystal, car stone, which respond to the psychokinetic wave lengths of thought, transforming them into energy. In the ordinary matrix mechanic — and in spite of what the Terrans think, matrix mechanics is just a science, which anybody can learn — this psychokinetic ability is developed independent of telepathy. Though telepaths are better at it, especially on the higher levels.

But the Sharra matrix was keyed into the telepathic centers, and into the whole nervous system; body and brain.

It was dangerous to handle. Matrices of this kind were traditionally concealed in a weapon of some sort. Sharra’s matrix was the most fearful weapon ever devised. It was reasonable to hide it in a sword. A lithium bomb would have been better. Preferably one that would explode and destroy matrix and all… and me with it.

Marius was gazing down at me, with a set, horror-stricken face. He was shaking.

“Sharra’s matrix!” he whispered between stiff lips. “Why, Lew? Why?”

I turned on him, and demanded hoarsely, “How do you know—”

He had never been told. Our father had agreed to keep it from him. I got up, suspicion surging over me, but before I could complete the question, a burp from the intercom interrupted. Marius reached past me to grab it; listened, then held out the receiver and vacated his seat for me. “Official, Lew,” he said in an undertone.

“Department three,” said a crisp, bored voice, when I identified myself.

“Zandru!” I muttered. “Already? No — excuse me — go ahead.”

“Official notification,” said the bored voice. “A statement of intention to murder, in fair fight, has been filed with this office against Lewis Alton-Kennard-Montray-Alton. Declared murderer is identified as Robert Raymon Kadarin, address unregistered. Notification has been legally given; kindly accept and acknowledge the notice, or file a legally acceptable reason for refusal.”

I swallowed hard. “Acknowledged,” I said at last, and put down the receiver, sweating. The boy came and sat beside me. “What’s wrong, Lew?”

My head hurt, and I rubbed it with my good hand.

“I just got an intent-to-murder.”

“Hell,” said Marius, “already? Who from?”

“Nobody you know.” My scar twitched. Kadarin — leader of the rebels of Sharra; once my friend, now my sworn, implacable foe. He hadn’t lost any time in inviting me to settle our old quarrel. I wondered if he even knew I’d lost my hand. Tardily it occurred to me — as if it were something happening to someone else — that this would have been a legally admissible reason for refusing. I tried to reassure the staring boy.

“Take it easy, Marius. I’m not afraid of Kadarin, in fair fight. He never was any good with a sword. He—”

“Kadarin!” he stammered. “But, but Bob promised—”

“Bob!” Abruptly my fingers bit his arm. “How do you know Kadarin?”

“I want to explain, Lew. I’m not—”

“You’ll do a lot of explaining,. brother,” I said curtly. And then someone started to hammer purposefully on the door.

“Don’t open it!” said Marius urgently.

But I crossed the room and threw back the bolt, and Dio Ridenow ran into the room.

Since I’d seen her on the spaceport she had changed into men’s riding clothes, a little too big for her, and she looked like a belligerent child. She stopped, a step or two inside, and stood staring at the boy behind me.

“You know my brother,” I said impatiently.

But Dio stood frozen. “Your brother?” she gasped, at last,

“Are you out of your mind? That’s no more Marius than — than I am!” I drew back incredulously, and Dio stamped her foot in annoyance. “His eyes! Lew, you idiot, look at his eyes!”

My supposed brother made a quick lunge, taking me off balance. He threw his whole weight against us. Dio reeled, and I went down on one knee, fighting for balance. Eyes. Marius — now I remembered — had had the eyes of our Terran mother. Dark brown. No Darkovan has brown or black eyes. And this — this imposter who was not Marius looked at me with eyes of a stranger, gold-flecked amber. Only twice had I seen eyes like that. Marjorie. And—

“Rafe Scott!”

Marjorie’s brother! No wonder he had known me, no wonder I had sensed his presence as familiar. I remembered him, too, only as a small boy!

He tried to push past me; I grabbed at him and we swayed, struggling, in a bone-breaking clinch. “Where’s my brother?” I yelled. I twisted my foot behind his ankle, and we crashed to the floor together.

He’d never said he was Marius, it flashed across my mind in a split second. He just hadn’t denied it when I thought so…

I got my knee across his chest and held him pinned down. “What’s the idea, Rafe? Talk!”

“Let me up, damn you! I can explain!”

I didn’t doubt that a bit. How cleverly he had discovered that I was unarmed. But I should have known. I should have trusted my instinct; he didn’t feel like my brother. He hadn’t asked about father. He’d been embarrassed when I brought him a gift.

Dio said, “Lew, perhaps—” but before I could answer, Rafe gave an unexpected twist and sent me sprawling. Before I could scramble up, he thrust Dio unceremoniously aside, and the door slammed behind him.

I got up, my breath coming hard, and Dio came to me. “Are you hurt? Aren’t you going to try and catch him?”

“No, to both questions.” Until I found out why Rafe had tried, this clumsy and daring imposture, there would be no point in finding him. And meanwhile, where was Marius?

“The situation,” I remarked, not necessarily to Dio, “gets crazier every minute. Where do you come into it?”

She sat down on the bed and glared at me.

“Where do you think?”

For once I regretted that I could not read her mind. There was a reason why I couldn’t — but I won’t go into that now.

But Dio was trouble, in a pretty, small, blonde package. I was here on Darkover; I had to stay at least a while.

The social codes of Vainwal — where Dio, under the lax protection of her brother Lerrys, had spent the last two seasons — are considerably less rigid than the strict codes of Darkovan propriety. Her brother had had sense enough not to interfere.

But here on Darkover, Dio was comynara, and held laran rights in the vast Ridenow estates. And what was I? A half-caste of the hated Terrans — entanglement with Dio would bring all the Ridenow down on my head, and there were a lot of them.

I would be grateful to Dio all my life. When Marjorie was torn from me, in the horror of that last night when Sharra had ravened in the hills across the river, something had been cut from me. Not clean like my hand, but rotting and festering inside. There had been no other women, no other love, nothing but a bleak black horror, until Dio. She had flung herself into my life, a pretty, passionate, willful girl, and she had gone unflinching into that horror, and somehow, after that, I had healed clean.

Love? Not as I knew the word. But understanding, and implicit trust. I would have trusted her with my reputation, my fortune, my sanity — my life.

But I trusted her brothers about as far as I could see through the hull of the Southern Cross. And I couldn’t quarrel with them — not yet. I tried to make this clear to Dio without hurting her feelings, but it wasn’t easy. She sat sulking and swinging her feet while I paced up and down like a trapped animal. Just having her here in my rooms could be dangerous if her family got wind of it — however innocent. And I knew if we were together very much it wouldn’t be innocent. Dio’s murmured, “I understand,” made me angry because I knew she did not really understand at all.