rong side of fifty, seamed and burly and huge, with a split
lip and weathered face. I liked his looks. We shook hands and Forth
said, "This is our man, Kendricks. He's called Jason, and he's an expert
on the trailmen. Jason, this is Buck Kendricks."

"Glad to know you, Jason." I thought Kendricks looked at me half a
second more than necessary. "The 'copter's ready. Climb in, Doc--you're
going as far as Carthon, aren't you?"

We put on zippered windbreaks and the 'copter soared noiselessly into
the pale crimson sky. I sat beside Forth, looking down through pale
lilac clouds at the pattern of Darkover spread below me.

"Kendricks was giving me a funny eye, Doc. What's biting him?"

"He has known Jay Allison for eight years," Forth said quietly, "and he
hasn't recognized you yet."

But we let it ride at that, to my great relief, and didn't talk any more
about me at all. As we flew under silent whirring blades, turning our
backs on the settled country which lay near the Trade City, we talked
about Darkover itself. Forth told me about the trailmen's fever and
managed to give me some idea about what the blood fraction was, and why
it was necessary to persuade fifty or sixty of the humanoids to return
with me, to donate blood from which the antibody could be, first
isolated, then synthesised.

It would be a totally unheard-of thing, if I could accomplish it. Most
of the trailmen never touched ground in their entire lives, except when
crossing the passes above the snow line. Not a dozen of them, including
my foster-parents who had so painfully brought me out across Dammerung,
had ever crossed the ring of encircling mountains that walled them away
from the rest of the planet. Humans sometimes penetrated the lower
forests in search of the trailmen. It was one-way traffic. The trailmen
never came in search of _them_.

* * * * *

We talked, too, about some of those humans who had crossed the mountains
into trailmen country--those mountains profanely dubbed the Hellers by
the first Terrans who had tried to fly over them in anything lower or
slower than a spaceship. (The Darkovan name for the Hellers was even
more explicit, and even in translation, unrepeatable.)

"What about this crew you picked? They're not Terrans?"

Forth shook his head. "It would be murder to send anyone recognizably
Terran into the Hellers. You know how the trailmen feel about outsiders
getting into their country." I kn