ood day, Jason," Rhes called from the bed. "If I didn't believe in
medicine so strongly, I would be tempted to say there is a miracle in
your machine that has cured me overnight."

There was no doubt that he was on the mend. The inflamed patches had
vanished and the burning light was gone from his eyes. He sat, propped
up on the bed, watching the morning sun melt the night's hailstorm into
the fields.

"There's meat in the cabinet there," he said, "and either water or visk
to drink."

The visk proved to be a distilled beverage of extraordinary potency that
instantly cleared the fog from Jason's brain, though it did leave a
slight ringing in his ears. And the meat was a tenderly smoked joint,
the best food he had tasted since leaving Darkhan. Taken together they
restored his faith in life and the future. He lowered his glass with a
relaxed sigh and looked around.

With the pressures of immediate survival and exhaustion removed, his
thoughts returned automatically to his problem. What were these people
really like--and how had they managed to survive in the deadly
wilderness? In the city he had been told they were savages. Yet there
was a carefully tended and repaired communicator on the wall. And by the
door a crossbow--that fired machined metal bolts, he could see the tool
marks still visible on their shanks. The one thing he needed was more
information. He could start by getting rid of some of his
misinformation.

"Rhes, you laughed when I told you what the city people said, about
trading you trinkets for food. What do they really trade you?"

"Anything within certain limits," Rhes said. "Small manufactured items,
such as electronic components for our communicators. Rustless alloys we
can't make in our forges, cutting tools, atomic electric converters that
produce power from any radioactive element. Things like that. Within
reason they'll trade anything we ask that isn't on the forbidden list.
They need the food badly."

"And the items on the forbidden list--?"

"Weapons, of course, or anything that might be made into a powerful
weapon. They know we make gunpowder so we can't get anything like large
castings or seamless tubing we could make into heavy gun barrels. We
drill our own rifle barrels by hand, though the crossbow is quiet and
faster in the jungle. Then they don't like us to know very much, so the
only reading matter that gets to us are tech maintenance manuals, empty
of basic theory.

"The last ba