ll as an Earthman, weathered by salt and sun, and he had worked
for Terran Intelligence since we were boys. We had traveled all over our
world together, and found it good.

And then, for some reason I had never known, it had come to an end.
Even now I was not wholly sure why he had erupted, that day, into
violence and a final explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving me a
marked man. And a lonely one: Juli had gone with him.

I strode the streets of the slum unseeing, my thoughts running a
familiar channel. Juli, my kid sister, clinging around Rakhal's neck,
her gray eyes hating me. I had never seen her again.

That had been six years ago. One more adventure had shown me that my
usefulness to the Secret Service was over. Rakhal had vanished, but he
had left me a legacy: my name, written on the sure scrolls of death
anywhere outside the safe boundaries of Terran law. A marked man, I had
gone back to slow stagnation behind a desk. I'd stood it as long as I
could.

When it finally got too bad, Magnusson had been sympathetic. He was the
Chief of Terran Intelligence on Wolf, and I was next in line for his
job, but he understood when I quit. He'd arranged the transfer and the
pass, and I was leaving tonight.

I was nearly back to the spaceport by now, across from the street-shrine
at the edge of the square. It was here that the little toy-seller had
vanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand other
such street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinking
before the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and symbol
are everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol, then
slowly moved away.

The lighted curtains of the spaceport cafe attracted my attention and I
went inside. A few spaceport personnel in storm gear were drinking
coffee at the counter, a pair of furred _chaks_, lounging beneath the
mirrors at the far end, and a trio of Dry-towners, rangy, weathered men
in crimson and blue shirt cloaks, were standing at a wall shelf, eating
Terran food with aloof dignity.

In my business clothes I felt more conspicuous than the _chaks_. What
place had a civilian here, between the uniforms of the spacemen and the
colorful brilliance of the Dry-towners?

A snub-nosed girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for
_jaco_ and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the
Dry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of
them,