s, like a tiny white ribbon, which we could
follow for the first stage of the trip. Forth evidently did not share my
enthusiasm.

"You know, Jason, there is one real danger--"

"Do you think I care about danger? Or are you afraid I'll
turn--foolhardy?"

"Not exactly. It's not a physical danger, Jason. It's an emotional--or
rather an intellectual danger."

"Hell, don't you know any language but that psycho double-talk?"

"Let me finish, Jason. Jay Allison may have been repressed,
overcontrolled, but you are seriously impulsive. You lack a
balance-wheel, if I could put it that way. And if you run too many
risks, your buried alter-ego may come to the surface and take over in
sheer self-preservation."

"In other words," I said, laughing loudly, "if I scare that Allison
stuffed-shirt he may start stirring in his grave?"

Forth coughed and smothered a laugh and said that was one way of putting
it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said, "Forget it,
sir. I promise to be godly, sober and industrious--but is there any law
against enjoying what I'm doing?"

Somebody burst out of the warehouse-palace place, and shouted at me.
"Jason? The guide is here," and I stood up, giving Forth a final grin.
"Don't you worry. Jay Allison's good riddance," I said, and went back to
meet the other guide they had chosen.

And I almost backed out when I saw the guide. For the guide was a woman.

She was small for a Darkovan girl, and narrowly built, the sort of body
that could have been called boyish or coltish but certainly not, at
first glance, feminine. Close-cut curls, blue-black and wispy, cast the
faintest of shadows over a squarish sunburnt face, and her eyes were so
thickly rimmed with heavy dark lashes that I could not guess their
color. Her nose was snubbed and might have looked whimsical and was
instead oddly arrogant. Her mouth was wide, and her chin round, and
altogether I dismissed her as not at all a pretty woman.

She held up her palm and said rather sullenly, "Kyla-Raineach, free
Amazon, licensed guide."

I acknowledged the gesture with a nod, scowling. The guild of free
Amazons entered virtually every masculine field, but that of mountain
guide seemed somewhat bizarre even for an Amazon. She seemed wiry and
agile enough, her body, under the heavy blanket-like clothing, almost as
lean of hip and flat of breast as my own; only the slender long legs
were unequivocally feminine.

The other men were checki