The Human Edge

THE GAME OF FIVE

“You can’t do this!” The big young man was furious. His blunt, not-too-intelligent looking features were going lumpy with anger. “This is—” He pounded the desk he sat before with one huge fist, stuck for a moment as to just what it could be—“it’s illegal!”

“Quite legal. A Matter of Expediency, Mr. Yunce,” replied the Consul to Yara, cheerfully, waving a smoke tube negligently in his tapering fingers. The Consul’s name was Ivor Ben. He was half the size of Coley Yunce, one third the weight, twice the age, fifteen times the aristocrat—and very much in charge.

“You draft me all the way from Sol Four!” shouted Coley. “I’m a tool designer. You picked me off the available list yourself. You knew my qualifications. You aren’t supposed to draft a citizen anyway, except you can’t get what you want some other way.” His glare threatened to wilt the Consul’s boutonniere, but failed to disturb the Counsul. “Damn Government seat-warmers! Can’t hire like honest people! Send in for lists of the men you want, and pick out just your boy—never mind he’s got business on Arga IV ten weeks from now. And now, when I get here you tell me I’m not going to design tools.”

“That’s right,” said the Consul.

“You want me for some back-alley stuff! Well, I won’t do it!” roared Coley. “I’ll refuse. I’ll file a protest back at Sol—” He broke off suddenly, and stared at the Consul. “What makes you so sure I won’t?”

The Consul contemplated Coley’s thick shoulders, massive frame and a certain wildness about Coley’s blue eyes and unruly black hair, all with obvious satisfaction

“Certain reasons,” he said, easily. “For one, I understand you grew up in a rather tough neighborhood in old Venus City, back on Sol II.”

“So?” growled Coley.

“I believe there was something in your citizen’s file about knives—”

“Look here!” exploded Coley. “So I knew how to use a knife when I was a kid. I had to, to stay alive in the spaceport district. So I got into a little trouble with the law—”

“Now, now—” said the Consul, comfortably. “Now, now.”

“Using a man’s past to blackmail him into a job that’s none of his business. ‘Would I please adjust to a change in plans, unavoidable but necessary—’ Well, I don’t please! I don’t please at all.”

“I’d recommend you do,” interrupted the Consul, allowing a little metal to creep into his voice. “You people who go shopping around on foreign worlds and getting rich at it have a bad tendency to take the protection of your Humanity for granted. Let me correct this tendency in you, even if several billion others continue to perpetuate the notion. The respect aliens have always given your life and possessions is not, though you may have thought so heretofore, something extended out of the kindness of their hearts. They keep their paws off people because they know we Humans never abandon one of our own. You’ve been living safe within that system all your life, Mr. Yunce. Now it’s time to do your part for someone else. Under my authority as Consul, I’m drafting you to aid me in—”

“What’s wrong with the star-marines?” roared Coley.

“The few star-marines I have attached to the Consulate are required here,” said the Consul.

“Then flash back to Sol for the X-4 Department. Those Government Troubleshooters—”

“The X-4 Department is a popular fiction,” said the Consul, coldly. “We draft people we need, we don’t keep a glamorous corps of secret operators. Now, no more complaints Mr. Yunce, or I’ll put you under arrest. It’s that, or take the job. Which?”

“All right,” growled Coley. “What’s the deal?”

“I wouldn’t use you if I didn’t have to,” said the Consul. “But there’s no one else. There’s a Human—one of our young lady tourists who’s run off from the compound and ended in a Yaran religious center a little over a hundred miles from here.’

“But if she’s run off… of her own free will—”

“Ah, but we don’t believe it was,” said the Consul. “We think the Yarans enticed or coerced her into going.” He paused. “Do you know anything about the Yarans?”

Coley shook his head.

“Every race we meet,” said the Consul, putting the tips of his fingers together, “has to be approached by Humanity in a different way. In the case of Yara, here we’ve got a highly humanoid race which has a highly unhuman philosophy. They think life’s a game.”

“Sounds like fun.” said Coley.

“Not the kind of a game you think,” said the Consul, undisturbed. “They mean Game with a capital G. Everything’s a Game to be played under certain rules. Even their relationship as a race to the human race is a Game to be played. A Game of Five, as life is a game of five parts—the parts being childhood, youth, young adulthood, middle age and old age. Right now, as they see it, their relations with Humanity are in the fourth part—Middle Age. In Childhood they tried passive indifference to our attempt to set up diplomatic relations. In Youth, they rioted against our attempt to set up a space terminal and human compound here. In Young Adulthood they attacked us with professional soldiery and made war against us. In each portion of the game, we won out. Now, in Middle Age, they are trying subtlety against us with this coercion of the girl. Only when we beat them at this and at the Old Age portion will they concede defeat and enter into friendly relations with us.”

Coley grunted.

“According to them, Sara Illoy—that’s the girl—has decided to become one of them and take up her personal Game of Life at the Young Adulthood stage. In this stage she has certain rights, certain liabilities, certain privileges and obligations. Only if she handles these successfully, will she survive to start in on the next stage. You understand,” said the Consul, looking over at Coley, “this is a system of taboo raised to the nth level. Someone like her, not born to the system, has literally no chance of surviving.”

“I see,” said Coley. And he did.

“And of course,” said the Consul, quietly, “if she dies, they will have found a way to kill a member of the human race with impunity. Which will win them the Middle Age portion and lose us the game, since we have to be perfect to win. Which means an end to us on this world; and a bad example set that could fire incidents on other non-human worlds.”

Coley nodded.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” he asked.

“As a female Young Adult,” said the Consul, “she may be made to return to the compound only by her lover or mate. We want you to play the young lover role and get her. If you ask for her, they must let her go with you. That’s one of the rules.”

Coley nodded again, this time cautiously.

“They have to let her go with me?” he said.

“They have to,” repeated the Consul, leaning back in his chair and putting the tips of his fingers together. He looked out the tall window of the office in which he and Coley had been talking. “Go and bring her back. That’s your job. We have transportation waiting to take you to her right now.”

“Well, then,” growled Coley, getting to his feet. “What’re we waiting for? Let’s get going and get it over with.”

Three hours later, Coley found himself in the native Yaran city of Tannakil, in one of the Why towers of the Center of Meaning.

“Wait here,” said the native Yaran who had brought him; and walked off leaving him alone in the heavily-draped room of the hexagonal wooden tower. Coley watched the Yaran leave, uneasiness nibbling at him.

Something was wrong, he told himself. His instincts were warning him. The Yaran that had just left him had been the one who had escorted him from the human compound to the native seacoast town outside it. They had taken a native glider that had gotten its original impulse by a stomach-sickening plunge down a wooden incline and out over a high sea-cliff. Thereafter the pilot with a skill that—Coley had to admit—no human could have come close to matching, had worked them up in altitude, and inland, across a low range of mountains, over a patch of desert and to this foothill town lying at the toes of another and greater range of mountains. Granted the air currents of Yara were more congenial to the art of gliding, granted it was a distance of probably no more than a hundred and fifty miles, still it was a prodigious feat by human standards.

But it was not this that had made Coley uneasy. It was something in the air. It was something in the attitude of the accompanying Yaran, Ansash by name. Coley considered and dismissed the possibility that it was the alienness of Ansash that was disturbing him. The Yarans were not all that different. In fact, the difference was so slight that Coley could not lay his finger upon it. When he had first stepped outside the compound, he had thought he saw what the difference was between Yarans and humans. Now, they all looked as Earth-original as any humans he had ever seen.

No, it was something other than physical—something in their attitudes. Sitting next to Ansash in the glider on the trip here, he had felt a coldness, a repulsion, a loneliness—there was no point in trying to describe it. In plain words he had felt that Ansash was not human. He had felt it in his skin and blood and bones:—this is a thing I’m sitting next to, not a man. And for the first time he realized how impossible and ridiculous were the sniggering stories they told in bars about interbreeding with the humanoids. These beings, too, were alien; as alien as the seal-like race of the Dorcan system. From the irrational point of view of the emotions, the fact that they looked exactly like people only made it worse.

Coley took a quick turn about the room. The Yaran had been gone for only a couple of minutes, but already it seemed too long. Of course, thought Coley, going on with his musings, it might be something peculiar to Ansash. The glider pilot had not made Coley bristle so. In fact, except for his straight black hair—the Yarans all had black hair, it was what made them all look so much alike—he looked like any friendly guy on any one of the human worlds, intent on doing his job and not worried about anything else…. Was Ansash never coming back with that girl?

There was a stir behind the draperies and Ansash appeared, leading a girl by the hand. She was a blonde as tall as the slighter-boned Yaran who was leading her forward. Her lipstick was too red and her skin almost abnormally pale, so that she looked bleached-out beside Ansash’s native swarthiness. Moreover, there was something sleepwalking about her face and the way she moved.

“This is Sara Illoy,” said Ansash, in Yaran, dropping her hand as they stopped before Coley. Coley understood him without difficulty. Five minutes with a hypnoteacher had given him full command of the language. But he was staring fascinated at the girl, who looked back at him, but did not speak.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Coley. “I’m Coley Yunce, Sol II.”

She did not answer.

“Are you all right?” Coley demanded. Still she looked up at him without speaking and without interest. There was nothing in her face at all. She was not even curious. She was merely looking.

“She does not speak,” the voice of Ansash broke the silence. “Perhaps you should beat her. Then she might talk.”

Coley looked sharply at him. But there was no expression of slyness or derision on the Yaran’s face. “Come on,” he growled at the girl, and turned away. He had taken several steps before he realized she was not following. He turned back to take her by the hand—and discovered Ansash had disappeared.

“Come on,” he growled again; and led the girl off to where his memory told him he and Ansash had entered through the drapes. He felt about among the cloth and found a parting. He towed the girl through.

His memory had not tricked him. He was standing on the stairs up which he and Ansash had come earlier. He led the girl down them and into the streets of Tannakil.

He paused to get his bearings with his feet on the smoothly fitted blocks of the paving. Tannakil was good-sized as Yaran towns went, but it was not all that big. After a second, he figured out that their way back to the glider field was to their right, and he led the girl off.

This was part of the Yaran attitude, he supposed; to deprive him of a guide on the way back. Well, they might have done worse things. Still, he thought, as he led Sara Illoy along, it was odd. No Yaran they passed looked at them or made any move to show surprise at seeing two obvious humans abroad in their town. Not only that, but none of the Yarans seemed to be speaking to each other. Except for the occasional hoof-noises of the Yaran riding-animal—a reindeer-like creature with a long lower lip—the town was silent.

Coley hurried on through the streets. The afternoon was getting along; and he did not fancy a flight back over those mountains at dusk or in the dark, no matter how skillful the Yaran pilots were. And in time the wooden Yaran buildings began to thin out and the two of them emerged onto the grassy field with its towering wooden slide, like a ski-jump, only much taller, up to which the gliders were winched, and down which they were started.

Coley had actually started to lead the girl toward the slide when the facts of the situation penetrated his mind.

The field was empty.

There were no gliders on its grass, at the top of the slide, or winched partway up it. And there were no Yarans.

Coley whirled around, looking back the way he had come. The street he and the girl had walked was also empty. Tannakil was silent and empty—as a ghost town, as a churchyard.

Coley stood spraddle-legged, filled with sudden rage and fear. Rage was in him because he had not expected to find a joker in this expedition right at the start; and fear—because all the gutter instinct of his early years cried out against the danger of his position.

He was alone—in a town full of potential enemies. And night was not far off.

Coley looked all around him again. There was nothing; nothing but the grass and the town, the empty sky, and a road leading off straight as a ruler toward the desert over which he had flown, toward the distant mountains, and the coast beyond.

And then he noticed two of the Yaran riding animals twitching up grass with their long lower lips, beside the road a little way off.

“Come on,” he said to the girl, and led the way toward the animals. As he drew near, he could see that they had something upon their backs; and when he reached them he discovered, as he had half-expected, that they were both fitted with the Yaran equivalent of the saddle. Coley grinned without humor; and looked back toward the town.

“Thanks for nothing,” he told it. And he turned to boost the girl into one of the saddles. She went up easily, as someone who had ridden one of the beasts before. He untethered her animal, passed the single rein back up into her hand, then unhitched and mounted the other beast himself. There was a knife tied to its leather pad of a saddle.

They headed off down the road into the descending sun.

They rode until it became too dark to see the road before them. Then Coley stopped and tethered the animals. He helped the girl down and unsaddled the beasts. The saddles came off—and apart—quite easily. In fact, they were the simplest sort of riding equipment. The equivalent of the saddlecloth was a sort of great sash of coarse but semi-elastic cloth that went completely around the barrel of the animal and fastened together underneath with a system of hooks and eyes. The saddle itself was simply a folded-over flap of leather that hook-and-eyed to the saddle cloth. Unfolded, Coley discovered the saddle was large enough to lie on, as a groundsheet; and the unfolded saddle cloth made a rough blanket.

He and the girl lay down to sleep until the moon rose. But Coley, not unsurprisingly, found sleep hard to come by. He lay on his back, gazing up at the sprinkling of strange stars overhead, and thinking hard.

It was not hard to realize he had been suckered into something. Coley had expected that. It was harder to figure out what he had been suckered into, and by whom, and why. The presence of the knife on his saddle pointed the finger at the Consul; but to suppose the Consul was in league with the humanoids ran counter to Coley’s experience with a half a dozen non-human worlds. He was not inexperienced with aliens—his speciality was designing and adapting human-type tools for the grasping of alien appendages. He was only inexperienced with humanoids. Lying on his back, he narrowed his eyes at the stars and wished he had found out more about the Consul.

Four hours after sunset, by Coley’s watch, the moon rose. Coley had expected one sooner, since Yara was supposed to have two of them. But then he remembered hearing that the orbits of both were peculiar so that often neither would be visible over any given spot for several nights hand-running. He roused the girl, who got up without protest. They saddled and rode on.

Coley tried from time to time to get the girl to talk. But, although she would look at him when he spoke to her, she would not say a word.

“Is this something you did to yourself?” he asked her. “Or something they did to you? That’s what I’d like to know.”

She gazed solemnly at him in the moonlight.

“How about nodding your head for yes, or shaking it for no?”… He tried speaking to her in Yaran. When that failed, he tried upper middle English, and what he knew of Arcturan’s local canting tongue. On a sudden chilling impulse, Coley urged his beast alongside hers, and, reaching out, pressed on her jaw muscles until she automatically opened her mouth. In the moonlight, he saw she still had her tongue.

“It’s not that,” he said. He had remembered certain ugly things done around the Spaceport district of Venus City. “So it must be psychological. I’ll bet you were all right when you left the compound,” He found himself clenching his teeth a little and thinking, for no obvious reason, of Ansash. To get his mind off it, he looked at his watch again.

“Time to stop and rest a bit, again,” he said. “I want to get as far as possible across this desert at night, but there’s no use killing ourselves right at the start.”

He stopped the beasts, helped the girl down and unsaddled.

“A couple of hours nap,” he said. “And then we go.” He set his watch alarm and fell asleep.

He woke up to broad daylight and hooting voices. Automatically, he leaped to his feet. One ankle tripped him and threw him down again. He lay there, half-propped on one elbow, seeing himself surrounded by a bunch of young Yarans.

His hand slipped quietly to his belt where he had tucked the knife from the saddle. To his astonishment, it was still there. He let his hand fall away from it, and pretending to be dazed, glanced around under half-closed eyelids.

Sara Illoy was not to be seen. Of the young Yarans around him—all of them uniformly dressed in a sort of grey loose robe or dress, tightly belted at the waist—the large majority were male. None of them seemed to be paying any great attention to him. They were all hooting at each other without words and—well, not dancing so much as engaging in a sort of semi-rhythmic horseplay with each other. Most of the males carried knives themselves, tucked in their belts; and some had tucked in beside the knives a sort of pistol with an exaggeratedly long slim barrel and a bulbous handle.

Farther off, he could occasionally glimpse between the bounding and whirling bodies some of the riding animals, tethered in a line and contentedly twitching up grass. Coley measured the distance between himself and the beasts, speculated on the chance of making a run for it—and gave the notion up.

A thought about the girl occurred to him.

“But right now, kid,” he thought silently to himself, “if I had the chance, it’d be everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost. I wasn’t raised to be a shining knight.”

At the same time he admitted to himself that he was glad she wasn’t around to see him, if he did have a chance to make a break for it—no reason to rub in the fact that she would be being abandoned. Then he went back to worrying about his own skin.

Coley had discovered in the gutters and back alleys of Venus City when he was young that the best cure for being afraid was to get angry. He had learned this so well that it had become almost automatic with him; and he began to feel himself growing hot and prickly under his shirt, now, as he lay still with his eyes half-closed, waiting. There would be a chance to go out fighting—he did have the knife.

Suddenly—so suddenly that he found himself unprepared for it—the roughhousing and hooting stopped and he found himself jerked to his feet. A knife flashed, and the tension of the rope binding his ankle fell away. He found himself standing, loosely surrounded by Yarans; and through the gaps between them he could see the line of riding animals clearly and close.

He almost took the bait. Then, just in time, he recognized what was before him as one of the oldest traps known to civilized beings. He had seen exactly the same trick played back in Venus City. He had played it, himself. The idea was to tempt the victim with the hope of an escape, to tempt him into running; and when he did, to chase and catch him again, cat-and-mouse fashion.

With this sudden realization, confidence came flooding back into him. The alienness of the situation melted away and he found himself back in familiar territory. He stretched up to his full height, which was half a head taller than the tallest of the Yarans surrounding him; and smiled grimly at them, his eyes skipping from individual to individual as he tried to pick out the one that would be the leader.

He almost fell into the error of picking out the largest of the Yarans around him. Then he thought of a surer index of rank, and his eyes swept over the male Yarans at belt level, until they halted on one whose belt held two pistols, with matching butts. Coley smiled again and strode calmly forward toward the Yaran he had picked out.

With a sudden rush the Yarans spread out into a circle, leaving Coley and the male with two pistols inside. Coley halted within double his arms’ length of the other, and hooked his thumbs into his own belt. His eye met that of the Yaran before him sardonically.

Up until now, the Yaran had not moved. But, as the circle reached its full dimension and went still, his right hand flashed to the butt of one of his pistols. In the same instant, Coley dropped to one knee. His knife flashed in his hand and glittered suddenly as it flew through the air.

And the Yaran fell, clutching at the knife in his chest.

A chorus of wild hoots went up; and when Coley glanced up from the male he had just knifed, the others were scrambling for their riding animals. Within seconds, they were mounted and gone, the dust of the desert rolling up behind them to mark their trail. Of the long line of riding animals, only two were left.

And, peering around the farther of these, was the girl.

Coley buried the Yaran he had killed, before he and the girl took up their road again.

Coley had expected the desert to be a man-killer by day. It was not—for reasons he did not understand, but guessed to have something to do with its altitude, and also the latitude in which this part of Yara lay. Still, it was hot and uncomfortable enough, and they had neither food or water with them. Luckily, later on in the day they came to a wayside well; the water of which, when Coley tasted it gingerly, proved to be sweet enough. He drank and handed the dipper to the girl.

She drank eagerly as well.

“Now, if we could just happen on something to eat,” Coley told her. She showed no sign that she understood him, but, later in the day, when they came to the nearer foothills of the coastal mountain range, she rode off among the first trees they came to. When he followed her, he found her eating a black-skinned fruit about the size of a tangerine.

“Here, what are you doing?” shouted Coley, grabbing the fruit out of her hand. She made no protest, but picked another fruit from the small, wide-branched small tree or bush beside her. Seeing her bite into it without hesitation, Coley felt his alarm dwindle.

“I suppose they fed you some of these while you were there,” he growled. He sniffed the fruit, then licked at it where the pulp was exposed. It had a rather sour, meaty taste. He took a tentative bite himself. It went down agreeably. He took another.

“Oh, well—what the hell!” he said. And he and the girl filled themselves up on the fruit.

That night, when they camped on the very knees of the mountains themselves, Coley lay stretched out under his animal-blanket, trying to sort out what had happened to them and make some sense from it.

The situation was the wildest he had ever encoun-tered. If certain elements in it seemed to be doing their best to kill him (and undoubtedly the girl as well) off, other elements seemed just as determined to keep them alive. Tannakil had been a death-trap if they had lingered there after nightfall; he knew this as surely as if he had seen it written in Basic on one of the wooden walls there. But Tamakil had apparently provided the riding animals for their escape.

Those Yaran youngsters back there on the desert had not been fooling either. Yet they had ridden off. And the desert had been no joke; but the well had been just where it needed to be—and how come those fruit trees to be so handy, and how did the girl too recognize them, even some way back from the road?

Unthinkingly, he half-rolled over to ask her. Then it came back to him that she would not be able to answer; and he frowned. There was something about this business of the girl herself that was funny, too….

Thinking about it, he fell asleep.

The next day, they pushed on into the mountains, finding pleasanter country full of shaggy-barked, low green trees, and green ground-covering of tiny, thick-growing ferns. They climbed steadily into cooler air, and the road narrowed until it was hardly more than a trail. The mountain tops ahead, at least, were free from snow, so that whatever happened, they would not have to contend with mountain storms and low temperatures, for which neither of them was dressed or equipped.

Then an abrupt and dramatic change took place. The road suddenly leveled out, and then began to dip downward, as if they had come into a pass. Moreover, it was now wider and more carefully engineered than Coley had ever seen it before. And more than that, after a little while it began to sport a crushed rock topping.

They were walled in on both sides by steep rock, and were descending, apparently, into an interior mountain valley. Suddenly they heard a sharp hooting noise, twice repeated, from up ahead of them; and around the curve of the mountain road came a double line of Yarans mounted on running riding animals. The leading Yaran yelled a command, the riding animals were reined in and skidded to a halt; and one mounted Yaran who was holding a sort of two-handed bellows with a long, ornately carved tube projecting from it, pumped the device once, producing a single additional hoot which at this close range hurt Coley’s eardrums.

These mounted Yarans were dressed in short grey kilts with grey, woolly-looking leggings underneath that terminated in a sort of mukluk over each foot, and bulky, thick, green sweater-like upper garments with parka-type hoods which they wore thrown back on their shoulders. They did not hold the single reins of their riding animals in their hands, but had them loosely looped and tied leaving their hands free—the right one to carry what was truly a fantastically long-barreled version of the bulbous-handled pistols Coley had encountered in the desert, the left one to be carried in a fist against the left hip, the elbow stylishly cocked out. They were all riding in this position when Coley first saw them; and the sudden sliding halt did not cause a single fist to slip. There was also both a short and a long knife in each man’s green belt.

“Permissions?” snapped the Yaran on the lead animal; and continued without waiting for an answer. “None? You are under arrest. Come with me.” He started to turn his animal.

“Wait a minute—” began Coley. The other paused, and Coley noticed suddenly that his belt was not green, like the others, but yellow. “Never mind,” said Coley. “We’re coming.”

The yellow-belted Yaran completed his turn, nodded to the one with the bellows, and an ear-splitting hoot shook the air. One moment later Coley found himself and the girl on their animals in a dead run for the valley below, with mounted Yarans all about them. Forgetting everything else, Coley grabbed for the front edge of his saddle flap and concentrated on hanging on.

They swept around a curve and down a long slope, emerging into a sort of interior plateau area which looked as if it might be a number of miles in extent. Coley was unable to make sure of this—not only because most of his attention was concentrated on staying on his mount, but because almost immediately they were surrounded by circular small buildings of stone, which a little farther on gave way to hexagonal small buildings, which yet further on gave way to five-sided, then square, then triangular edifices of the same size. Beyond the triangular buildings was an open space, and then a large, stone structure of rectangular shape.

The bellows hooted, the troop slid to a stop. The yellow-belted Yaran dismounted, signalled Coley and the girl to get down as well, and led them in through a door in the large, rectangular building. Within were a good number of Yarans standing at tall desks arranged in a spiral shape within a large room. The yellow-belted Yaran went to one of these, apparently at random from all Coley could discover, and held a whispered conversation. Then he returned and led them both off through more doors and down halls, until he ushered them into a room about twenty feet square, furnished only with a pile of grey cushions neatly stacked in one corner, and one of the tall desks such as Coley had seen arranged spirally in the large room behind them. A male Yaran, dressed like all the rest except that he wore a silver belt, turned away from the room’s single large window, and came to stand behind the tall desk,

“West Entrance. No permissions, Authority,” spoke up the yellow-belted one behind Coley.

“Now, wait a minute—” began Coley. “Let me tell you how we happened to come this way—”

“You—” said the silver-belted Yaran, suddenly interrupting. “You speak the real language.”

“Of course,” said Coley, “that’s part of why we happen to be here—”

“You are not one of the real people.”

“No. I—”

“Confine yourself to simple answers, please. You are Human?”

“Yes,” said Coley.

“A Human, speaking the real language, and here where you have no permission to be. A spy.”

“No,” said Coley. “Let me explain. Yesterday, our Consul…” He explained.

“That is your story,” said the silver-belted Yaran. “There’s no reason I should believe it—in view of the suspicious circumstances of your being here, an obvious Human, speaking the real tongue and without permission to be here. This young female will be taken into protective custody. You, as a spy, will be strangled.”

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said Coley, “The old persons down on the coast have their own ideas about how to deal with Humans. If I were you, I’d at least check up on my story before I stuck my neck out by having a Human strangled.”

“This is the Army,” retorted the silver-belted Yaran. “The old persons down on the coast have no authority over us. They have nothing whatsoever to say about what we do with spies caught in restricted areas. I want you to understand that clearly.” He stared at Coley with motionless black eyes for a long moment. “On the other hand,” he continued, “it is, of course, regular Army routine to check up on the stories of spies before strangling them. As I was just about to say, when you interrupted me. Consequently, you will be allowed the freedom of the commercial area adjoining the military establishment under my command here. I warn you, however, against attempting to spy any further, or trying to leave the area without permission. The female will still be taken into protective custody.”

He turned to the one in the yellow belt.

“Take him to the commercial area and turn him loose,” he ordered. Numbly, Coley followed the yellow-belted Yaran out, casting a rather helpless glance at the girl as he passed. But the girl seemed as blandly unconcerned about this as she had about almost everything else. The Yaran with the yellow belt led Coley out of the building, had him remount, and rode with him to a far side of the camp where they passed a sort of gate in a stone wall and found themselves among a cluster of wooden buildings like those Coley had seen at Tannakil.

Here, the yellow-belted Yaran turned his animal and scooted back into the military compound on the run, leaving Coley sitting alone, on his beast, in the center of a cobbled street.

It was past noon when Coley was turned loose. For more than a couple of hours of the short Yaran day, he rode around the commercial area. It was actually a small town, its buildings set up as permanently as the ones in the military area. What he saw confirmed his original notion that, much as the human sort of army is the same everywhere, the human sort of civilian population that clings to its skirts is pretty much the same, as well. The town—a sign at its geographic center announced its name to be Tegat—revealed itself to be a collection of establishments for the feeding, drinking, and other pleasuring of off-duty soldiers. So had the spaceport district been, back at Venus City. True, the clients of the district had not exactly been soldiers; but there was much similarity between the uniformed breed and the men who worked the starships

Once more, as he had in that moment back on the desert, Coley began to feel at home.

He considered his wealth, which consisted in Yaran terms of his muscle, his knife, and the animal he was riding, and then he stopped a passing Yaran, a civilian type in an unbelted grey robe.

“Who around here lends money?” asked Coley. “And just how do I go about finding him.”

The Yaran looked at him for a long moment without answering, and without any expression on his face that Coley could interpret. Then his thin mouth opened in the swarthy face.

“Two streets back, he said. “Turn right. Twelfth building, second floor. Call for Ynesh.”

Coley went back, found the second street and turned right into it. This turned out to be little more than an alley; and Coley, moreover, found he had trouble telling where one building left off and another started, since they were all built firmly into each other. Finally, by counting doorways and making a hopeful guess, he entered what he believed was the twelfth building and, passing a couple of interior doors, strode up a ramp and found himself on a landing one floor up. Here there were three more doors. Coley stopped, perplexed; then he remembered that his instructions had been to call for Ynesh.

“Ynesh!” he yelled.

The door on the furthest right flew open as if his voice had actuated some sort of spring release. No one came out, however. Coley waited a moment, then walked face first into a hanging drape. He pushed his way past the drape and found himself in a circular room containing cushions and one tall desk behind which a middle-aged Yaran in an unbelted figured green robe was standing. One tall window illuminated the room.

“Live well,” said the Yaran, “I am Ynesh. How much would you like to borrow?”

“Nothing,” said Coley—although his empty stomach growled at this denial of the hope of the wherewithal to buy something to put in it. Ynesh did not stir so much as a finger that Coley could see, but suddenly three good-sized Yarans in belted, knee-length robes of blue-grey appeared from the drapes. They all had two knives in their belts.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” said Coley, hastily, “I wouldn’t have come here unless I meant to do some business. How’d you like to make some money?”

Ynesh still stood without moving. But the three with knives disappeared back into the drapery. Coley breathed more easily. He walked forward to the desk and leaned close.

“I suppose,” he said to the Yaran, “there’s some sort of limit set on how much interest you can charge, and how much you can lend the ordinary soldier.”

Ynesh parted his thin lips.

“For every grade an amount of credit commensurate with the pay scale for that grade. The interest rate is one tenth of the principal in the period of one year, proportionately decreased for shorter lengths of time. This rate and amount is set by the military Authority in Chief. Everyone but a Human would know that, Human.”

“Call me Coley,” said Coley.

“Gzoly,” replied the Yaran, agreeably.

“You wouldn’t want to risk going above the amounts or charging a greater interest rate, I take it?” said Coley.

“And lose my license to lend?” said Ynesh. He had not pulled back from Coley. They were talking, Coley suspected, with more cozy intimacy than probably any Human and Yaran had talked to date. It was marvelous what the right sort of topic could do to eradicate awkwardness in communication between the races. “I would hardly be sensible to do that, Gzoly.”

“What if somebody else would take the risks for you—say, take your money and lend it without a license, quietly, but for better than the usual rates of interest, in any amount wanted?”

“Now who, Gzoly, would do that?” said Ynesh.

“Perhaps certain soldiers wouldn’t object to acting as agents,” said Coley. “They borrow the money from you and relend to their fellow soldiers at higher rates? Under the blanket, no questions asked, money in a hurry.”

“Ah, but I wouldn’t be able to lend each one of them more than his grade-amount of credit, since it would surely be traced back to me,” said Ynesh, but in no tone that indicated that he considered the topic closed. “Moreover, where would be the extra profit? I’d have to lend to them at legal rates.” He paused, almost imperceptibly. The effect was that of a silent shrug. “A pity. But that is the Game.”

“Of course,” said Coley. “On the other hand, there are no rules set up for me. I could lend them as much as they wanted, at any rate I wanted. And also since I’m a Human, you could lend me the money originally at a higher-than-legal rate of interest.”

“Ah,” said Ynesh.

“I thought the idea would meet with your approval,” said Coley.

“It might be worth trying in a limited way, Gzoly,” said Ynesh. “Yes, I think it might. I will be glad to lend you a small trial sum, at, say, a fifth part in yearly interest.”

“I’m afraid,” said Coley, straightening up from the desk, “that you happen to be one of those real people who would cut open the insect that spins the golden nest. A fifth in interest would force me to relend at rates that would keep my agents from finding any borrowers, after they had upped their own rates to make their cut. I’m afraid I couldn’t do business with you unless I borrowed at no more than a ninth part.”

“Ridiculous. I’m laughing,” said Ynesh, without cracking a smile or twitching a facial muscle. “If you’re one of those people who always like to feel they’ve beaten a little off the price for form’s sake, I’ll let you have your first sum at five and a half.”

“Goodbye,” said Coley.

“Now, wait a minute,” said Ynesh. “I might consider…” And the classical argument proceeded along its classical lines, terminating in a rate to Coley of eight and three-quarters part of the principal on a yearly basis.

“Now, the only question is,” said Ynesh, after the rate had been settled, “Whether I can trust you with such a sum as I had in mind. After all, what proof have I—”

“I imagine you’ve heard by this time,” said Coley, drily. “The military Authority has confined me to this area. If I try any tricks you won’t have any trouble finding me.”

“True,” said Ynesh, as if the thought had just struck him for the first time….

Coley went out with money in his pocket and intrigued the Yaran who sold food in one of the eating and drinking establishments by ordering a large number of different items and sampling them all in gingerly fashion. The search was not a particularly pleasant one for Coley’s tastebuds; but he did eventually come up with a sort of a stew and a sort of a pudding that tasted reasonably good—and assuaged a two days hunger. He also tried a number of the Yaran drinks, but ended up gagging on their oily taste and settled for water.

Then, having eaten and drunk, he glanced around the establishment. Not far off across the room a Yaran soldier with the green belt of the lower ranks was seated glumly at a table holding an empty bowl and a stick of incense that had burned itself completely out. Coley got up, went over and plumped down on a stool at the same table.

“Cheer up,” he said. “Have a drink on me. And tell me—how’d you like to make some money…?”

It took about a week and a half for Coley’s presence in the commercial area and in the military establishment to make itself felt. Early the third day, Coley discovered where the girl was being held—in a sort of watchtower not far from the main gate. However, there was no getting in to her and obviously she could not get out—though from the few glimpses Coley had had of her uninterested face when it occasionally showed itself at the window of the tower when he was watching, it was a good question whether she even wanted to.

Otherwise, however, things had gone well. Every day had become a little more comfortable. For one thing, Coley had discovered that the Yaran meats, in spite of their gamey taste, were quite satisfying if soaked in oil before, during, and after cooking. In addition to this, business was good; Coley having noticed that gambling was under as strict regulations as the lending of money, had thoughtfully started a chain-letter scheme to start the financial picture moving.

A desert takes no more thirstily to one of its infrequent rain showers than the Yaran soldiers took to both of Coley’s schemes. The local money situation literally exploded; and ten days after Coley’s arrival. he was escorted to the office of the Yaran Authority who had originally passed sentence upon him.

The Authority in his silver belt was as inscrutable as ever. He waited until he and Coley were alone together.

“All my officers are in debt,” he said to Coley. “My common soldiers are become a rabble, selling their equipment to illegal buyers for money. The army treasury has been broken into and robbed. Where is all our money?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” replied Coley, who was being perfectly truthful. He knew only where about a fifth of the area’s hard cash was—carefully hidden in his room. As for the rest, Coley suspected other prudent souls had squirreled most of the rest out of the way; and that in any case the sum the Authority had in mind was entirely illusory, resulting from vast quantities of credit multiplying the actual cash reserves of the area.

“I will have you tortured to death—which is illegal,” said the Authority. “Then I will commit suicide—which is shameful but convenient.”

“Why do all that?” said Coley, enunciating clearly in spite of a slight unavoidable dryness of the mouth—for though he had planned this, he realized the extreme touchiness of the situation at this stage. “Let me and the girl go. Then you can declare a moratorium on all debts and blame it on the fact I absconded with the funds.”

The Authority thought a moment.

“A very good suggestion,” he said, finally. “However, there’s no reason I should actually let you go. I might as well have a little fun out of all this.”

“Somebody might find out, if I didn’t actually escape with the girl. Then the blame would fall on you.”

The Authority considered again.

“Very well. A pity,” he said. “Perhaps I shall lay hands on you again, some day, Human.’

“I don’t think so,” said Coley. “Not if I can help it.”

“Yes,” said the Authority. He went to the entrance of the room and gave orders. Half an hour later, Coley found himself, his belongings, and the girl hurrying on a pair of first-class riding animals out the far end of the pass, headed down toward the seacoast. The early sunset of Yara was upon them and twilight was closing down.

“Great hero,” breathed the girl in Yaran. Coley jerked about and stared at her through the gathering gloom. But her expression was as innocuous as ever, and for all the expression there was on her face, it might have been somebody else entirely who had spoken.

“Say that again,” said Coley.

But she was through speaking—at least for the present.

Coley had managed to get away with the money hidden in his room. He wore it in a double fold of heavy cloth—a sort of homemade money belt—wrapped around his waist under his shirt; and a few coins taken from it supplied himself and the girl with a room for the night at a way-station that they came to that night after the second moon rose in the sky. The coins also supplied Coley with food—raw meat which he cooked himself over the brazier filled with soft coal which the way-station help brought in to heat the room. He offered some to the girl, but she would not eat it; and if he had not thought of the notion of ordering in some fruit, she might have gone to sleep without any food at all. The last thing he saw, by the dim glow of the dying coals in the brazier was the girl half-curled, half-sitting in a far corner of the room on some cushions and looking in his direction steadily, but still without expression or a word.

The following morning, they left the way-station early. Coley had been wary that in spite of his decision the military Authority might have sent men after them. But evidently the Yaran mind did not work that way. They saw no signs of any threat or soldiers.

By mid-day, between the clumps of bush-like fern that covered the seaward side of these mountains, they began to catch glimpses of the coast below them, and when they stopped to rest their animals in a spot giving them an open view of the lowlands, it was possible for Coley to make out the glittering spire of the traffic control tower in the Human Compound.

He pointed. “We’re almost home,” he said, in Basic. The girl looked at him interestedly for a long second.

“Hawmn,” she said, finally.

“Well!” said Coley, straightening up in his saddle. “Starting to come to life, are you? Say that again.”

She looked at him.

“Say that again,” repeated Coley, this time in Yaran.

“Hawmn,” she said.

“Wonderful! Marvelous!” said Coley. He applauded. “Now say something else in Basic for the nice man.”

“Hawmn,” she said.

“No,” said Coley. “You’ve said that. Try something else. Say—say—” He leaned toward her, enunciating the words carefully in Basic. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen—”

She hesitated.

“Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns—” she managed.

“Lend me your ears—”

“Lenz me ur ears—”

“Come on, kid,” said Coley, turning his own riding animal’s head once more back onto the downtrail, “this is too good to let drop. I come not to bury—”

“I cauzm nodt do burrey—”

They rode on. By the time they reached the first gate of the walled town, as dusk was falling, the girl was reciting in Basic like a veteran. The guard at the gate stared at the strange sounds coming from her mouth.

“What’s the matter with her? You can’t go in, Human; the gate’s already closed for the night. What’s your business in Akalede?”

Coley gave the Yaran a handful of coins.

“Does that answer your questions?” he asked.

“Partly—” said the guard, peering at the coins in the falling dusk.

“In that case,” said Coley, smoothly, “I suppose I’ll just have to wait outside tonight; and perhaps some of my good friends inside the city, tomorrow, can fill out the answer for you. Although,” said Coley, “perhaps a fuller answer may not be quite what you—”

“Pass, worthy person,” said the gateman, swinging the door wide and standing back deferentially. Coley and the girl rode on into the city of Akalede.

The streets they found themselves in were full of Yarans pushing either homeward, or wherever Yarans went at sundown. From his experience with the commercial area outside the military compound, Coley suspected a majority of the males at least were on their way to get drunk. Or drugged, thought Coley, suddenly remembering he had not been able to drink enough of things Yaran to discover what it was in their potables that addicted the populace to them. He had seen Yarans become stupefied from drinking, but what kind of stupefaction it was, he suddenly realized, he had not the slightest idea. This made him abruptly thoughtful; and he rode on automatically, trying to chase down an elusive conclusion that seemed to skitter through his mind just out of reach.

His riding animal stopped suddenly. Coming to himself with a start, he saw he had ridden full up against a barricade that blocked the street.

“What the—”

His bridle strap was seized and he looked down at a kilted Yaran whose clothes bore the cut, if not the color of the army.

“Human, you’re under arrest,” said the lean face. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the Compound,’ said Coley. “I and this female Human have to get back—”

“Permissions?”

“Well, you see,” said Coley, “We—”

But the Yaran was already leading him off; and other kilted Yarans had fallen in around the mounts of Coley and his companion.

Coley stood, cursing inwardly, but with a bland smile on his face. Behind him, the girl was silent. The heavy drapes of the room in the building to which they had both been brought did not stir. The only thing that stirred was the lips of the rather heavy-set, obviously middle-aged Yaran standing behind a tall desk.

“You have made a mistake,” said the middle-aged Yaran.

Coley was fully prepared to admit it. The middle-aged native before him was apparently a local magistrate. As such, he had made it obvious that it was up to him whether Coley and the girl were to be allowed through the barricades into the restricted area of the city that lay between them and the Human Compound. And Coley, judging by his past experience with these people, had just made the mistake of trying to bribe him.

“I am, you see,” went on the magistrate, “one of the real people who actually plays the Game. But perhaps you don’t know about the Game, Human?”

Coley rubbed his dry lips in what he hoped was a casual gesture.

“A little about it,” he said.

“You could hardly,” said the magistrate, leaning on the high desk, “know more than a little. Understanding in its full sense would be beyond you. You see—we real people, all of us, hope to reach Old Age.” He paused, his black eyes steady on Coley. “Of course, I am not speaking of a physical old age, an age of the body, which is nothing. I am speaking of true Old Age, that highest level of development that is winnable.”

“That’s pretty much how I heard it,” said Cole.

“Few of us,” said the magistrate, going on as if Cole had said nothing, “very few of us make it, and we do it only by playing the Game to perfection.”

“Oh. I see,” said Coley.

“It does not matter if you do,” said the magistrate. “What matters is that I offer you this explanation, leaving it up to you to use, misuse or ignore it as you will. Because, you see, there is one thing required of a player of the Game.” He paused, looking at Coley.

“What?” said Coley, filling the gap in the conversation

“Consistency,” said the magistrate. “His rules of living—which he chooses for himself—may be anything, good or bad. But having adopted them, he must live by them. He cannot do himself the violence of violating his own principles. A person may adopt selfishness as a principle; but, having adopted it, he may not allow himself the luxury of unselfishness. He must live by the principles chosen in youth—and with them try to survive to years of maturity and wisdom.” He paused. “If he falters, or if the world kills or destroys him, he has lost the Game. So far—” he leaned a little closer to Coley—“I have neither faltered nor been destroyed. And one of my principles is absolute honesty. Another is the destruction of the dishonest.”

“I see,” said Coley. “Well, what I meant was—”

“You,” went on the magistrate, inexorably, “are one of the dishonest.”

“Now, wait! Wait!” cried Coley. “You can’t judge us by your standards. We’re Human!”

“You say that as if it entitled you to special privileges,” said the magistrate, almost dreamily. “The proof of the fact that the Game encompasses even you is the fact that you are here caught up in it.” He reached below the table and came up with a sort of hour-glass, filled not with sand but with some heavy liquid. He turned it over. “This will run out in a few moments,” he said. “If before it has run out you come up with a good reason why you should, within the rules of the Game, be allowed on into the Human Compound, I will let you and the female go. Otherwise, I will have you both destroyed.”

The liquid from the little transparent pyramid at the top of the timing device began to run, drop by drop, down into the pyramid below. The liquid was clear, with no reddish tint, but to Coley it looked like the blood he could feel similarly draining out of his heart. His mind flung itself suddenly open, as if under the influence of some powerfully stimulating drug, and thoughts flashed through it like small bursts of light. His gutter-bred brain was crying out that there was a gimmick somewhere, that there was a loophole in any law, or something new to get around it—The liquid in the top of the timer had almost run out.

And then he had it.

“How can you be sure,” said Coley, “that you’re not interrupting a process that greater minds than your own have put in motion?”

The magistrate reached slowly out, took the timer from the top of the desk and put it out of sight behind the desk top.

“I’ll have you escorted to the gates of the Human Compound by one of our police persons,” he said.

Coley was furious—and that fury of his, according to his way of doing things, hid not a little fear.

“Calm down,” said his jailer, one of a squad of star-marines attached to the embassy, unlocking the cell door. “I’ll have you out in a minute.”

“You’d better, lint-picker,” said Coley.

“Let’s watch the names,” said the star-marine. He was almost as big as Coley. He came inside and stood a few inches from Coley, facing him. “They want you upstairs in the Consul’s office. But we got a couple of minutes to spare, if you insist.” Coley opened his mouth—then shut it again.

“Forget it,” growled Coley. “Shoved into jail—locked up all night with no explanation—you’d be hot, too. I want to see that Consul.”

“This way,” said the jailer, standing aside. Coley allowed himself to be escorted out of the cell, down a corridor, and up a fall-tube. They went a little way down another corridor and through a light-door into the same office Coley had been in before. Some two weeks before, to be precise. The Consul, Ivor Ben was standing with his back to the hunched, smoke tube in his fingers, and a not pleasant look on his aristocratic face.

“Stand over there,” he said; and crossing to his desk, pushed a button on it. “Bring in the girl,” he said. He pushed another button. “Let Ansash in now.”

He straightened up behind the desk. A door opened behind Coley; and he turned to see the girl he had escorted from Tannakil. She looked at him with her usual look, advanced a few steps into the office, as the door closed behind her, and then halted—as if the machinery that operated her had just run down.

Only a couple of seconds later, a door at the other end of the room opened, and Ansash came in. He walked slowly into the room, taking in Coley and the girl with his eyes.

“Well, hello there,” said Coley. Ansash considered him flatly.

“Hello,” he said in Basic, with no inflection whatsoever. He turned to the Consul. “May I have an explanation?”

The Consul swiveled about to look at Coley.

“How about it?”

“How about what?” said Coley.

The Consul stalked out from behind his desk and up to Coley, looking like some small rooster ruffling up to a turkey. He pointed past Coley at the girl.

“This is not the woman I sent you to get!” he said tightly.

“Oh, I know that,” said Coley.

The Consul stared at him.

“You know it?” he echoed.

“He could hardly avoid knowing,” put in the smooth voice of Ansash. “He was left alone with this female briefly, when I went to fetch his beloved. When I returned, he had vanished with this one.”

The Consul, who had looked aside at Ansash when the other started speaking, looked back at Coley, bleakly and bitterly.

“That,” went on Ansash, “is the first cause of the complaint I brought you this morning. In addition to stealing this real person, the Human, Coley Yunce, has committed other crimes upon the earth of Yara, up to and including murder.”

“Yes,” breathed the Consul, still staring at Coley. Coley looked bewildered.

“You mean she’s no good?” he asked the Consul.

“No good? She isn’t Sara Illoy, is she?” exploded the Consul.

“I mean, won’t she do?” said Coley. “I mean—she looks pretty human. And she talks fine Basic—” He stepped over to the girl and put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Recite for them, Honey. Come on, now—‘Friends, Romans—’.”

She looked up into his face and something that might almost have been a smile twitched at her expressionless mouth. She opened her lips and began to recite in an atrocious accent.

“Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns, I cauzm nodt do burrey Shaayzar, budt do brayze ymn. Dee eefil dwadt memn dooo—”

“Never mind! Never mind!” cried the Consul, furiously; and the girl shut up. “You must have been out of your head!” he barked, and swung about on Ansash. “Very clever, my friend,” he grated. “My compliments to Yara. I suppose you know the real Sara Illoy came back of her own accord, the day after this man left.”

“I had heard some mention of it,” said Ansash, without inflection.

“Very clever indeed,” said the Consul. “So it’s a choice between handing this man over to your justice to be strangled, or accepting a situation in which contact between our two races on this planet is permanently frozen in a state of Middle-Age restricted contact and chicanery.”

“The choice is yours,” said Ansash, as if he might have been remarking on the weather.

“I know. Well, don’t worry,” said the Consul, turning to fling the last three words at Coley. “You know as well as I do I have no choice. Human life must be preserved at all costs. I’ll get you safely off-planet, Yunce; though I wouldn’t advise you to go boasting about your part in this little adventure. Not that anyone would do anything but laugh at you, if you did.” He turned to look at Ansash. “I’m the real loser as you all know,” he added softly. “Yara’ll never rate an Ambassador, and I’ll never rate a promotion. I’ll spend the rest of my professional life here as Consul.”

“Or,” put in Coley, “in jail.”

Three heads jerked around to look at him.

“What kind of a sucker do you take me for?” snarled Coley, spinning around upon the girl. His long arm shot out, there was a very humanlike shriek, and the girl staggered backward, leaving her blonde locks in Coley’s fist. Released, a mass of chestnut hair tumbled down to frame a face that was suddenly contorted with shock.

“I learned to look for the gimmick in something before I could walk.” He threw the blonde wig in the direction of the Consul’s desk. “This set-up of yours stunk to high heaven right from the beginning. So the girl’s gone! How’d she get out of the Compound in the first place? How come you didn’t call in regular help from the authorities back at Sol? You were all just sitting back waiting for a tough boy you could use, weren’t you?”

He glared around at the three in the room. None of them answered; but they all had their eyes on him.

“I don’t know what kind of racket you’ve got here,” he said. “But whatever it is, you didn’t want the Humans to win the Game, did you? You wanted things to stay just the way they are now. Why?”

“You’re out of your head,” said the Consul, though his face was a little pale.

“Out of my head!” Coley laughed. “I can feel the difference between Ansash and you, Consul. You think I wouldn’t notice that the girl I was with was a Yaran, almost right off the bat? And who could suppose I would need a knife when I left Tannakil, but the man who knew I could use one? How come I never saw her eat anything but fruit? A native Yaran wouldn’t have restricted her diet.” He leaned forward. “Want me to tell you what the deal was?”

“I think,” said the Consul, “We’ve listened to enough of your wild guessing.”

“No you haven’t. Not on your life,” said Coley. “I’m back among Humans, now. You can’t shut my mouth and get away with it; and either you listen to me, or I’ll go tell it to the star-marines. I don’t suppose you own them.”

“Go ahead, then,” said the Consul.

Coley grinned at him. He walked around the Consul’s desk and sat down in the Consul’s chair. He put his feet on the table.

“There’s a world,” he said, examining the rather scuffed toes of his boots with a critical eye. “It seems to be run on the basis of an idea about some sort of Game, which is practically a religion. However, when you look a little closer, you see that this Game thing isn’t much more than a set of principles which only a few fanatics obey to the actual letter. Still, these principles are what hold the society together. In fact, it goes along fine until another race comes along and creates a situation where the essential conflict between what everybody professes to believe and what they actually believe will eventually be pushed into the open.” Coley glanced over at the Consul. “How’m I doing?”

“Go on,” said the Consul, wincing.

“The only thing is, this is a conflict which the race has not yet advanced far enough to take. If it came to the breaking point today, half the race would feel it their duty to go fanatic and start exterminating the other half of the race who felt that it was time to discard the old-fashioned Games Ethic.” He paused.

“Go on,” said the Consul, tonelessly.

“Now, let’s suppose this world has a Consul on it, who sees what’s happening. He reports back to Sol that the five stages or the Game consist of (1) trying to rid yourself of your enemy by refusing to acknowledge his existence, as a child ignores what it does not like. (2) By reacting against your enemy thoughtlessly and instinctively, as a youth might do. (3) By organized warfare—young manhood. (4) By trickery and subtlety—middle-age. (5) By teaching him your own superior philosophy of existence and bringing him by intellectual means to acknowledge your superiority—old age.

“The only trouble with this, the Consul reports, is that the Yaran philosophy is actually a more primitive one than the human; and any attempt to conquer by stage five would induce a sort of general Yaran psychosis, because they would at once be forced to admit a philosophical inferiority and be unable to admit same.”

“All right, Mr. Yunce,” said the Consul. “You needn’t go on—”

“Let me finish. So Sol answers back that they sympathize, but that they cannot violate their own rigid rules of non-interference, sanctity of a single human life, etc., for any situation that does not directly threaten Humanity itself. And this Consul—a dedicated sort—resolves to do the job himself by rigging a situation with help from one of the more grown-up Yarans and a young lady—”

“My aide-de-camp,” said the Consul, wearily. Coley bowed a little in the direction of the girl.

“—a situation where a tough but dumb Human sets out inside the Rules of the Game, but so tears them to shreds that the Game-with-Humans is abandoned and set aside—where it will rot quietly and disappear as the two races become more and more acquainted, until it gradually is forgotten altogether. Right?”

Coley looked at him. They looked back at him with peculiarly set faces. Even the Yaran’s face had something of that quality of expression to it. They looked like people who, having risked everything on one throw or the dice and won, now find that by gambling they have incurred a sentence of death.

“Fanatics,” said Coley, slowly, running his eyes over them. “Fanatics. Now me—I’m a business man.” He hoisted himself up out of his chair. “No reason why I shouldn’t get on down to the pad, now, and catch the first ship out of here. Is there?”

“No, Mr. Yunce,” said the Consul, bleakly. The three of them watched him stalk around the desk and past them to the door. As he opened the door the Consul cleared his throat.

“Mr. Yunce—” he said.

Coley stopped and turned, the door half open.

“Yes?” he said.

“What’s—” the Consul’s voice stuck in his throat. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride to your ship.”

He came around the desk and went out with Coley. They went down and out of the Consulate, but all during the short ride to the Compound’s landing pad for the big interspace ships, the Consul said not another word.

He was silent until they reached the ramp leading up to the ship then in ready position.

“Anywhere near Arga IV?’ Coley asked the officer at the ramphead.

“No, Sirius and back to Sol. Try the second ship down. Deneb, and you can get a double transfer out of Deneb Nine.”

Coley and the Consul walked down onto the ramp leading up to the entrance port on the second ship, some twenty feet up the steel sides.

“Farewell,” said Coley, grinning at the Consul and starting up the ramp.

“Yunce!” the word tore itself at last from the Consul’s lips.

Coley stopped, turned around and looked a few feet down into the older man’s pleading eyes.

“What can I do for you?’ he said.

“Give me a price,” said the Consul.

“A price?” Coley, grinning, spread his hands. “A price for what?

“For not reporting this back on Sol. If you do, they’ll have to take action. They won’t have any choice. They’ll undo everything you did.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t do that,” said Coley. He grinned happily, leaned down and slapped the smaller man on the shoulder. “Cheer up,” he said. The Consul stared up at him. Slowly, the older man’s eyebrows came together in a searching frown.

“Yunce?” he said. “Who…? Just who are you anyway?”

Coley grinned and winked at him. And then he burst into a loud laugh, swing about and went trotting up the airlock ramp and into the ship, still laughing. At the airlock, he stopped, turned, and threw something white that fluttered and side-slipped through the air until it fell on the concrete pad by the Consul’s feet. The consul leaned over and picked it up.

It was a folded sheaf of paper, sealed with a melt-clip with no identifying symbol upon it. On one side it was stamped top secret.

The Consul hesitated, broke it open and looked at it. What stared back up at him was that same report he had written back to the authorities on Sol five years before, concerning the Yaran Game of Five and its possible disastrous conclusion. Clipped to it was a little hand-printed note in rather rakish block capitals.

Scratched in the lower right hand corner of the note, as if in idle afterthought, was a small A4.

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