hat Flora made friends with
Sylvie immediately. His mother, however, regarded the engineer's
daughter with badly concealed hostility, and seemed to doubt that
Sylvie was the kind of girl she wanted her son getting involved with.
Outwardly, of course, she was quite gracious.

Rodney Maxwell and Yves Jacquemont flew to Storisende the next
morning, both more optimistic about finding a ship than Conn thought
the circumstances warranted. Conn stayed at home for the next few
days, luxuriating in idleness. He and Sylvie tore down his mother's
household robots and built sound-sensors into them, keying them to
respond to their names and to a few simple commands, and including
recorded-voice responses in a thick Sheshan accent. All the smart
people on Terra, he explained, had Sheshan humanoid servants.

His mother was delighted. Robots that would answer when she spoke to
them were a lot more companionable. She didn't seem to think, however,
that Sylvie's mechanical skills were ladylike accomplishments. Nice
girls, Litchfield model, weren't quite so handy with a spot-welder.
That was what Conn liked about Sylvie; she was like the girls he'd
known at the University.

They were strolling after dinner, down the Mall. The air was sharp and
warned that autumn had definitely arrived; the many brilliant stars,
almost as bright as the moon of Terra, were coming out in the dusk.

"Conn, this thing about Merlin," she began. "Do you really believe in
it? Ever since Dad and I came to Poictesme, I've been hearing about
it, but it's just a story, isn't it?"

He was tempted to tell her the truth, and sternly put the temptation
behind him.

"Of course there's a Merlin, Sylvie, and it's going to do wonderful
things when we find it."

He looked down the starlit Mall ahead of him. Somebody, maybe Lester
Dawes and Morgan Gatworth and Lorenzo Menardes, had gotten things
finished and cleaned up. The pavement was smooth and unbroken; the
litter had vanished.

"It's done wonderful things already, just because people started
looking for it," he said. "Some of these days, they're going to
realize that they had Merlin all along and didn't know it."

There was a faint humming from somewhere ahead, and he was wondering
what it was. Then they came to the long escalators, and he saw that
they were running.

"Why, look! They got them fixed! They're running!"

Sylvie grinned at him and squeezed his arm.

"I get you, chum," she said. "Of course the