"He
isn't my brother, Mr. Lord. We had to sign on that way because your company
prohibits a man and wife sailing in the same crew."

In that moment she stripped her soul bare to him. Poor, plain,
conscientious Ann Howard! Fighting to hold her man; fighting the unknown
odds of an alien world, the stealthy seduction of an amoral people. Lord
understood Ann, then, for the first time; he saw the shadow of madness
that crept across her mind; and he pitied her.

"I'll do what I can," he promised.

As he left the schoolroom she collapsed in a straight-backed chair--thin
and unattractive, like Ann herself--and her shoulders shook with silent,
bitter grief.

* * * * *

Martin Lord took the familiar path to Niaga's village. The setting sun
still spread its dying fire across the evening sky, but he walked slowly
through the deep, quiet shadows of the forest. He came to the stream where
he had met Niaga; he paused to dip his sweat-smeared face into the cool
water cascading over a five foot fall.

A pleasant flood of memory crowded his mind. When he had first met Niaga,
almost a week before, she had been lying on the sandy bank of the stream,
idly plaiting a garland of red and blue flowers. Niaga! A copper-skinned
goddess, stark naked and unashamed in the bright spot light of sun filtered
through the trees. Languorous, laughing lips; long, black hair loosely
caught in a net of filmy material that hung across her shoulder.

The feeling of guilt and shame had stabbed at Lord's mind. He had come,
unasked, into an Eden. He didn't belong here. His presence meant pillage, a
rifling of a sacred dream. The landing had been a mistake.

Oddly enough, the _Ceres_ had landed here entirely by chance, the result of
a boyish fling at adventure.

Martin Lord was making a routine tour of representative trade cities before
assuming his vice-presidency in the central office of Hamilton Lord, Inc.
It had been a family custom for centuries, ever since the first domed ports
had been built on Mars and Venus.

Lord was twenty-six and, like all the family, tall, slim, yellow-haired.
As the Lords had for generations, Martin had attended the Chicago
University of Commerce for four years, and the Princeton Graduate School
in Interstellar Engineering four more--essential preparations for the
successful Federation trader. In Chicago Martin had absorbed the basic
philosophy of the Federation: the union of planets and div