d anything new
about the Scoops?"

"Nothing beyond the fact that the islanders don't talk about them," Jeff
said. "I've seen perhaps a dozen offshore during the seven cycles I've
been here. One usually surfaces outside my harbor at about the time old
Charlie Mack's supply boat comes in."

Thinking of Charlie Mack brought a forced end to his report. "Charlie's
due now. I'll call back later."

He cut the circuit, hurrying to have his communicator stowed away before
old Charlie's arrival--not, he thought bitterly, that being found out
now would make any great difference.

* * * * *

Stepping out into the brief Calaxian dawn, he caught his glimpse of the
Ciriimian ship's landing before the island forest of palm-ferns cut it
off from sight. Homeside hadn't been bluffing, he thought, assuming as a
matter of course that this was the task force Satterfield had been
ordered to send.

"They didn't waste any time," Jeff growled. "Damn them."

He ignored the inevitable glory of morning rainbow that just preceded
Procyon's rising and strode irritably down to his miniature dock. He was
still scowling over what he should tell Charlie Mack when the _Island
Queen_ hove into view.

She was a pretty sight. There was an artist's perception in Jeff in
spite of his drab years of EI patrol duty; the white puff of sail on
dark-green sea, gliding across calm water banded with lighter and darker
striae where submerged shoals lay, struck something responsive in him.
The comparison it forced between Calaxia and Earth, whose yawning Fourth
War scars and heritage of anxieties made calm-crystals so desperately
necessary, oppressed him. Calaxia was wholly unscarred, her people
without need of the calm-crystals they traded.

Something odd in the set of the _Queen's_ sails puzzled him until he
identified the abnormality. In spite of distance and the swift approach
of the old fishing boat, he could have sworn that her sails bellied not
with the wind, but against.

They fell slack, however, when the _Queen_ reached his channel and
flapped lazily, reversing to catch the wind and nose her cautiously into
the shallows. Jeff dismissed it impatiently--a change of wind or some
crafty maneuver of old Charlie Mack's to take advantage of the current.

Jeff had just set foot on his dock when it happened. Solid as the
planking itself, and all but blocking off his view of the nearing
_Island Queen_, stood a six-foot owl.