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Larry said, slowly, “I guess I must take after you, then, Dad. Because I don’t want to stay in one spotlike what you call a sensible man, either. Dad, I
 
want
 
to go. Couldn’t you figure that out? I’ve neverwanted anything so much!”

Wade Montray drew a long sigh. “I hoped you’d say that—how I hoped you’d say that!” He tossed thetapes into a pile of Larry’s clothes, and stood up.

“All right, son. Brush up on the language, then. There must be more than one sort of education.”

Listening to the language tapes, moving his tongue around the strange fluid tones of the Darkovanspeech, Larry had felt his excitement grow and grow. There were strange new concepts and thoughts inthis language, and hints of things that excited him. One of the proverbs caught at his imagination with astrange, tense glow:
 
It is wrong to keep a dragon chained for roasting your meat
 
.

Were there dragons on Darkover? Or was it a proverbial phrase based on legend? What did theproverb mean? That if you had a fire-breathing dragon, it was dangerous to make him work for you? Or,did it mean that it was foolish to use something big and important for some small, silly job of work? Itseemed to open up a crack into a strange world where he glimpsed unknown ideas, strange animals, newcolors and thoughts through a glimmer of the unknown.

His excitement had grown with every day that passed, until they had taken the shuttle to the enormousspaceport and boarded the ship itself. The starship was huge and strange, like an alien city; but the tripitself had been a let-down. It wasn’t much different than a cruise by ocean liner, except that you couldn’tsee any ocean. You had to stay in your cabin most of the time, or in one of the cramped recreation areas. There were shots and immunizations for everything under the sun—under
 
any
 
sun, Larry correctedhimself—so that he went around with a sore arm for the first two weeks of the trip.

The only moment of excitement had come early in the voyage; just after breakway from Earth’s sun,when there had been a guided tour of the ship for everyone who wasn’t still struggling with accelerationsickness. Larry had been fascinated by the crew’s quarters, by the high navigation deck with its roomsfull of silent, brooding computers, the robots which handled, behind leaded-glass shields, any neededrepairs on the drive units. He’d even seen into the drive rooms themselves, by television. They were, ofcourse, radioactive, and even crew members could enter them only in the gravest emergencies. Mostexciting of all had been the single glimpse from the Captain’s bridge—the tiny glass dome with its suddenpanorama of a hundred million twinkling stars. Larry, pressing himself for his brief turn against the glass,felt suddenly very lost, very small and alone in this wilderness of giant, blazing suns and worlds spinningforever against the endless dark. When he moved away he was dazed and his eyes blurred.

But the rest of the trip had been a bore. More and more he had lost himself in daydreams about the newworld at the end of the journey. The very name,
 
Darkover
 
, had its curious magic. He envisioned a giantred sun lowering in a lurid sky, four moons in strange colors; his mind invented fantastic and impossibleshapes for the mysterious nonhumans who would crowd around the spaceship’s landing. By the time theywere sent to their staterooms to strap down for the long deceleration, he was simmering with wildexcitement.

He had watched the landing on TV; their approach to the planet in its veil of swirling sunset-orangeclouds that had thinned into the darkness of the night side as they came near; he’d felt the shudder andsurge of new gravity, the tingle of strangeness when one of the small iridescent moons swam across thecamera field. He wondered which of the moons it was. Probably Kyrrdis, he thought, with its blue-green

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shimmer, like a peacock’s wing. The names of the moons were a siren song of enchantment; Kyrrdis,

Idriel, Liriel, Mormallor.
 
We’re here
 
, he thought,
 
we’re really here
 
.

He waited, impatient but well-disciplined, for the loudspeaker announcement which permittedpassengers to unfasten their straps, collect their belongings and gather in the discharge entrance. Hisfather was silent at his side, and his face gave away nothing; Larry wondered how anyone could be soimpassive, but not wanting to seem childishly eager, Larry kept silence too. He kept his eyes on the metaldoor which would open on the strange world. When the crewman in his black leather began undoggingthe seals, Larry was almost literally shaking with excitement. A strange pinkish glow filtered around thefirst crack of the door.
 
The red sun? The strange sky
 
?

But the door swung open on night, and the pink glow was only the fiery light of welding torches from apit nearby, where workmen in hoods were working on the metal hull of another great ship. Larry,stepping out on to the ramp, felt the cold touch of disappointment. It was just another spaceport, just like Earth!

Behind him on the ramp, his father touched his shoulder and said, in a gently rallying tone, “Don’t standthere staring, son; your new planet won’t run away. I know how excited you must be, but let’s move ondown.”

Heaving a deep sigh, Larry began to walk down the ramp. He should have know it would turn out to bea gyp. Things you built up in your mind usually were a let-down.

Later, he was to remembef his sense of disillusion that morning, and laugh at himself; but at the moment,the flat disappointment was so keen he could almost taste it. The concrete felt hard and strange afterweeks of uncertain gravity in the spaceship. He swayed a little to get his balance, watching the small,buzzing cargo dollies that were whirring around the field, the men in black or grayish leather uniforms withthe insignia of the Terran Empire, on which the hard blue arcliphts reflected coldly. Beyond the lights wasa dark line of tall buildings.

“TheTerranTradeCity ,” his father pointed them out. “We’ll have rooms in the Quarters buildings. Come

on, we’d better get checked through the lines, there’s a lot of red tape.”

Larry didn’t feel sleepy—it had been daytime on the starship, by the arbitrary time cycle—but he wasyawning by the time they got through standing in line, having their passports and credentials checked,picking up their luggage from customs. As they came away from one booth, he looked up, idly, and thenhis breath caught. The darkness had thinned; the sky overhead, black when he had stepped from thespaceship, was now a strange, luminous grayed-pearl. In the east, great rays of crimson light, like a vast,shimmering Aurora Borealis, began to fan out and dance through the grayness. The lights trembled as ifseen through ice. Then a rim of red appeared on the horizon, gradually puffing up into an enormous,impossibly crimson sun. Blood red. Huge. Bloated. It did not look like a sun at all; it looked like a largeneon sign. The sky gradually shifted from gray to pink through the spectrum to a curious lilac-blue. In thenew light the spaceport looked strange and lurid.

As the light grew, behind the line of skyscrapers Larry gradually made out a skyline of mountains—high,rough-toothed mountains with cliffs and ice-falls shining red in the sun. A pale-blue crystal of moon stillhung on the shoulder of one mountain. Larry blinked, stared, kept turning to look at that impossible sun. It was still very cold; you couldn’t imagine that sun warming the sky as Earth’s sun did. Yet it was a hugered coal, an immense glowing fire, the color of—

“Blood. Yes, it’s a bloody sun,” said someone in the line behind Larry, “That’s what they call it. Looks

Page 5

it, too.”

Larry’s father turned and said quietly “Seems gloomy, I know. Well, never mind, in the Trade City therewill be the sort of light you’re used to, and sooner or later you’ll get accustomed to it.” Larry started toprotest, but his father did not wait for him to speak. “I’ve got one more line to go through. You might aswell wait over there. There’s no sense in you standing in line too.”

Obediently, Larry got out of line and moved away. They had climbed several levels now, in theirprogress from line to line, and stood far above the level where the starships lay in their pits. About ahundred feet away from Larry there was a huge open archway, and he went curiously toward it, eager tosee beyond the spaceport.

The archway opened on a great square, empty in the red morning light. It was floored with ancient,uneven flagstones; in the center there was a fountain, playing and splashing faintly pink. At the far end ofthe square, Larry saw, with a little shock of his old excitement, a line of buildings, strangely shaped, withcurved stone fronts and windows of a long lozenge shape. The light played oddly on what looked likeprisms of colored glass, set into the windows.

A man crossed the square. He was the first Darkovan Larry had seen; a stooped, gray-haired manwearing loose baggy breeches and a belted overshirt that seemed to be lined with fur. He cast a desultoryglance at the spaceport, not seeing Larry, and slouched on by.

Two or three more men went by. Probably, Larry thought, workmen on their way to early-morning jobs. A couple of women, wearing long fur-trimmed dresses, came out of one of the buildings; one began tosweep the cobblestone sidewalk with an odd-looking fuzzy broom, while the other started to carry smalltables and benches out on the walk from inside. Men lounged by; one of them sat down at a little table,signaled to one of the women, and after a time she brought him two bowls from which white steamsizzled in the frosty air. A strong pleasant smell, rather like bitter chocolate, reminded Larry that he wasboth cold and hungry; the Darkovan food smelled good, and he found himself wishing that he had some Darkovan money in his pocket. He remembered, experimentally, phrases in the language he had learned. He supposed he’d be able to order something to eat. The man at the table was picking up things thatlooked like pieces of macaroni, dipping them into the other bowl, and eating them, very tidily, with hisfingers and a long pick like one chopstick.

“What are you staring at?” someone asked, and Larry started, looking up, seeing a boy a little younger

than himself standing before him. “Where did you come from,
 
Tallo
 
?”

Not till the final word did Larry realize that the stranger had spoken to him in the Darkovan language,now so familiar through tapes.
 
Then I can understand it! Tallo—
 
that was the word for copper; hesupposed it meant
 
redhead
 
. The strange boy was red-headed too, flaming hair cut square around a thin,handsome, dark-skinned face. He was not quite as tall as Larry. He wore a rust-colored shirt andlaced-up leather jerkin, and high leather boots knee-length over close-fitting trousers. But Larry wassurprised more by the fact that, at the boy’s waist, in a battered leather sheath, there hung a short steeldagger.

Larry said at last, hesitantly in Darkovan, “Are you speaking to me?”

“Who else?” The strange boy’s hands, encased in thick dark gloves, strayed to the handle of his knife,

as if absentmindedly. “What are you staring at?”

“I was just looking at the spaceport.”

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“And where did you get those ridiculous clothes?”

“Now look here,” Larry said, taken aback at the rude tone in which the boy spoke, “why are you asking me all these questions? I’m wearing the clothes I have—and for that matter, I don’t think much of yours,” he added belligerently. “What is it to you, anyhow?”

The strange boy looked startled. He blinked. “But have I made a mistake? I never saw—who are you?”

“My name is Larry Montray.”

The boy with the knife frowned. “I can’t take it in. Do you—forgive me, but by some chance do you
belong
to the spaceport? No offense is intended, but—”

“I just came in on the ship
 
Pantomime
 
,” Larry said.

The stranger frowned. He said, slowly, “That explains it, I suppose. But you speak the language so well,and you look like—you must excuse my mistake, it was natural.” He stood staring at Larry for anotherminute. Then, suddenly, as if breaking the dam: “I’ve never spoken before to an off-worlder! What is itlike to travel in space? Is it true that there are many suns like this one? What are the other worlds like?”

But before Larry could answer, he heard his father’s voice, raised sharply. “Larry! Where have yougotten to?”

“I’m here,” he called, turning around, realizing that where he stood, he was hidden in the shadow of the archway. “Just a minute—” he turned back to the strange boy, but to his surprise and exasperation, the Darkovan boy had turned his back and was walking rapidly away. He disappeared into the dark mouth of a narrow street across the square. Larry stood frowning, looking after him.

His father came quickly toward him.

“What were you doing? Just watching the square? I suppose there’s no harm, but—” He sounded

agitated. “Who were you talking to? One of the natives?”

“Just a kid about my age,” Larry said. “Dad, he thought—”

“Never mind now.” His father cut him off, rather sharply. “We have to find our quarters and get settled.

You’ll learn soon enough. Come along.”

Larry followed, puzzled and exasperated at his father’s curtness. This wasn’t like Dad. But his firstdisappointment at the ordinariness of Darkover had suddenly disappeared.