tiously she pulled the door open. The rim corridor was empty.
She moved toward one of the intersecting corridors. When she heard
footsteps, she hid in another dormitory room.

This was different from the others. It showed more evidence of permanent
occupation. She guessed it was a dormitory for the people who took care
of the sick. Pictures were fastened to the curved, metal walls. Personal
articles cluttered the shelves hung beside the bunks. On a writing desk
she saw a number of typed reports. Five freshly laundered uniforms,
identical to the one she had lost in the antiseptic wash, hung on a rack
behind the door. Mryna stripped off the makeshift she was wearing and
put on one of the uniforms; she found boots under the desk. When she was
dressed, she stood admiring herself in the polished surface of the metal
door.

She was a handsome woman, and she was very conscious of that. Her face
was tanned by the mist-filtered sunlight of Rythar; her lips were red
and sensuous; her long, platinum-colored hair fell to her shoulders. She
compared herself to the small, hard-faced female she had seen in the
supply room. Was that a typical Earthwoman? Mryna's lips curled in a
scornful smile. Let the gods come down to Rythar, then, and discover
what a real female was like in the lush, green, Rytharian paradise.

Mryna went to the desk and glanced at the typed reports. They had been
written by a man who signed himself "Commander in Charge, Guardian
Wheel," and they were addressed to the Congress of the world government.
One typed document was a supply inventory; a second, still unfinished,
was a budget report. (_You won't show a profit next time_, Mryna thought
vindictively, _when we stop sending you the sacrifice ore_.) Another
report dealt with Rythar, and Mryna read it with more interest.

One paragraph caught her attention,

"We have asked for soil samples to be taken from an area covering ten
thousand square miles. Our chemical analysis has been thorough, and we
find nothing that could be remotely harmful to human life. Atmospheric
samples produce the same negative results. On the other hand, we have
direct evidence that no animal life has ever evolved on Rythar; the life
cycle is exclusively botanical."

The soil samples, Mryna realized, would be the vials of Earth which the
Earth-god had requested so often. Were the Earthmen planning to move
their hospital down to Rythar? That idea disturbed her. Mryna did not
want her ga