tiveness
behind locked doors. He had granted permission only after skin walls
had been erected to form an enclosure that could be guarded; it was
only incidental that they acted as a much-appreciated windbreak.

And after much argument the dangling chains and shackles had been
removed from Jason's arms and light-weight leg-irons substituted. He
had to shuffle when he walked but his arms were completely free, a
great improvement over the chains, even though one of the brothers
kept watch with a cocked crossbow as long as Jason wasn't fastened
down. Now he had to get some tools and some idea of the technical
knowledge of these people before he could proceed, which would
necessarily entail one more battle over their precious secrets.

"Come on," he called to his guard, "let's find Edipon and give his
ulcers another twinge."

After his first enthusiasm the leader of the D'zertanoj was getting
very little pleasure out of his new project.

"You have quarters of your own," he grumbled, "and the slave woman to
cook for you, and I have just given permission for the other slave to
help you. Now more requests--do you want to drain all the blood from
my body?"

"Let's not dramatize too much. I simply want some tools to get on with
my work, and a peek at your machine shop or wherever it is you do your
mechanical work. I have to have some idea of the way you people solve
mechanical problems before I can go to work on that box of tricks out
there in the desert."

"Entrance is forbidden--"

"Regulations are snapping like straws today, so we might as well go on
and finish off a few more. Will you lead the way?"

The guards were reluctant to open the refinery building gates to
Jason, and there was much rattling of keys and worried looks. A brace
of elderly D'zertanoj, stinking of oil fumes, emerged from the
interior and joined in a shouted argument with Edipon whose will
finally prevailed. Chained again, and guarded like a murderer, Jason
was begrudgingly led into the dark interior, the contents of which was
depressingly anticlimactic.

"Really from rubeville," Jason sneered and kicked at the boxful of
hand-forged and clumsy tools. The work was of the crudest, the product
of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been
laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It
leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe.
Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers