"That's the Styx," Alexander said. "Grandfather named
it. He was a classicist in his way--spent a lot of his time reading
books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with
the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano's
Mount Olympus. The marshland to the north is called the Pontine
Marshes--our main road is the Camino Real." Alexander grinned. "There's
a lot of Earth on Flora. You'll find it in every name. Grandfather
was an Earthman and he used to get nostalgic for the homeworld.
Well--there's Alexandria coming up. We've just about reached the end of
the line."

Kennon stared down at the huge gray-green citadel resting on a small
hill in the center of an open plain. It was a Class II Fortalice built
on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago--an ugly
spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and
weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern
forces.

"Why did he build a thing like that?" Kennon asked.

"Alexandria?--well, we had trouble with the natives when we first came,
and Grandfather had a synthesizer and tapes for a Fortalice in his
ship. So he built it. It serves the dual purpose of base and house. It's
mostly house now, but it's still capable of being defended."

"And those outbuildings?"

"They're part of your job."

The airboat braked sharply and settled with a smooth, sickeningly
swift rush that left Kennon gasping--feeling that his stomach was still
floating above him in the middle level. He never had become accustomed
to an arbutus landing characteristics. Spacers were slower and steadier.
The ship landed gently on a pitted concrete slab near the massive
radiation shields of the barricaded entranceway to the fortress.
Projectors in polished dually turrets swivelled to point their ugly
noses at them. It gave Kennon a queasy feeling. He never liked to trust
his future to automatic machinery. If the analyzers failed to decode the
ship's I.D. properly, Kennon, Alexander, the ship, and a fair slice of
surrounding territory would become an incandescent mass of dissociated
atoms.

"Grandfather was a good builder," Alexander, said proudly. "Those
projectors have been mounted nearly four hundred years and they're still
as good as the day they were installed."

"I can see that," Kennon said uncomfortably. "You ought to dismantle
them. They're enough to give a man the weebies."

Alexander chuckled. "O