to fetch another signal rocket, this time to cry for help
from wherever it might be available.
IV
Even on a poor world like Cyclops, the Corps en)oyed
the best of everything. It was a necessity to compensate
personnel for the often heartbreaking tasks that faced
them; likewise, however, it was a drawback in the same
way as the pay system based on longevity treatment,
creating envy and troubling Corps selection boards with
mobs of totally unsuitable candidates.
Symptomatic of Corps luxury here was Langen-
schmidt’s home and headquarters, a villa crowning the
highest point on the island which the Cyclops govern-
ment leased to them. There was no need for the com-
mandant to be in close physical touch with his
responsibilities in the repair-yard and portelectronic
links served the purpose and permitted the privacy pre-
ferred by a man whose longest service had been on a
lonely Patrol beat one tour of which might take a de-
cade.
His dismay at Maddalena’s unexpected response to his
first remarks after their meeting kept him silent until
they were together in the long, low, cool main room of
the villa, with the panorama of the island and its offshore
pontoons spread like a map in front of the wall-high
windows. Then, cradling a drink in both hands, he
leaned back in a contoured chair and stared at this
woman whom subconsciously he had still regarded an
hour ago as the hot-headed stand-in agent of the Carrig
affair, twenty years previous.
He had grown accustomed to the changes wrought in
himself by a return to comfort and civilisationthe rever-
sal of the aging effect, for instance. The sight of Madda-
lena at a “natural” forty-five years of age was a shock to
him. Her bones were still fine, her head still as exquisitely
shaped as an abstract sculpture, her eyes srill bright as
gems on either side of her regal nose, sharp as though to
symbolise her innate curiosity. But her skin was coarse,
her hands were rough, and there was an aura of exhaus-
tion in her attitude and her voice.
Tp try and dispel the disturbance she had caused in his
mind, he said with insincere heartiness, “Well, Mad-
dalena! How have things been going for you since we
last met?”
“Badly.” She made no move to sip the drink provided
for her, although she had taken a dry savoury cracker-
ball from a bowl and was rolling it absently between her
fingers. “I doubt if it was more than a logbook entry
for you, but you may remember that Headman Cashus
was assassinated soon after my assignment, and with him
went any hope of progress. So”
She crumbled the crackerball into dust and dropped
the fragments back in the dish. “So I’ve spent one hell of
a long time watching absolutely nothing happen. And
you?”
“AhI’ve been learning a new trade and finding I’m
not very good at it. Contemporary diplomacy, I guess
you’d say. I haven’t seen nothing happen, but on the
galactic scale things take place so slowly as to make a
fair approximation.” Langenschmidt hesitated. “Mad-
dalena, were you serious m what you said earlier, about
non-interference, or was that just due to tiredness after
your trip?”
“The tiredness has been building up for a long, long
time.” Now, finally, she tasted her drink, making no
comment on it. “Andyes. I’m serious.”
“Are you going clear back to the point of view I had
such trouble kicking you out ofalong with Pavel
Brzeskawhen we were going to Carrig?”
“No. That was the preconceived notion of a silly girl.
It’s been a long time, Gus, even for a Corpsman, and
I’vechanged, I guess.”
“Now look here!” Langenschmidt leaned forward.
“You’ve been on Thirteen, which barely counts as Class
A, where the refugees have had extremes of climate to
contend with, and in any case started off on the worst
possible basis by having no adequately trained leaders. I
can understand the sight of a primitive peasant commu-
nity getting anybody down. But before you change sides
on the question of non-interference, think of Fourteen
and Carrigyou should see the recent reports from
there, incidentally. Think of Seven, where they’re de-