y about easy things."

"Yeah, I know," snorted Johnny, rising to stretch. "The head-shrinker
always does it the hard way. You can't just dislike rice pudding; it has
to be a sister-syndrome. If the shortest distance is from here to there,
don't take it--remember your Uncle Oedipus."

Captain Anderson chuckled. "Cut your jets, Johnny. Maybe Paresi's
tortuous reasoning does seem out of order on such a nice day. But
remember--eternal vigilance isn't just the price of liberty, as the old
books say. It's the price of existence. We know we're here--but we don't
know where 'here' is, and won't until after we get back. This is
_really_ Terra Incognita. The location of Earth, or even of our part of
the galaxy, is something that has to be concealed at all costs, until
we're sure we're not going to turn up a potentially dangerous, possibly
superior alien culture. What we don't know can't hurt Earth. No
conceivable method could get that information out of us, any more than
it could be had from the squeak-box that Survey dropped here.

"Base all your thinking on that, Johnny. If that seems like leaning over
backwards, it's only a sample of how careful we've got to be, how many
angles we've got to figure."

"Hell," said the pilot. "I know all that. I was just ribbing the
bat-snatcher here." He thumbed a cigarette out of his tunic, touched his
lighter to it. He frowned, stared at the lighter, tried it again. "It
doesn't work. _Damn_ it!" he barked explosively, "I don't like things
that don't work!"

Paresi was beside him, catlike, watchful. "Here's a light. Take it easy,
Johnny! A bum lighter's not that important."

Johnny looked sullenly at his lighter. "It doesn't work," he muttered.
"Guaranteed, too. When we get back I'm going to feed it to Supply." He
made a vivid gesture to describe the feeding technique, and jammed the
lighter back into his pocket.

"Heh!" Ives' heavy voice came from the communications desk. "Maybe the
natives are primitives, at that. Not a whisper of any radio on any band.
No powerline fields, either. These are plowboys, for sure."

Johnny looked out at the sleeping valley. His irritation over the
lighter was still in his voice. "Imagine that. No video or trideo. No
jet-races or feelies. What do people do with their time in a place like
this?"

"Books," said Hoskins, almost absently. "Chess. Conversation."

"I don't know what chess is, and conversation's great if you want to
tell somebody somethin