The Zero Stone

THE ZERO STONE.

by Andre Norton.

ONE.

The dark was so thick in this stinking alley that a man might well put out his hand and catch shadows, pull them here or there, as if they were curtain stuff. Yet I could not quarrel with the fact that this world had no moon and that only its stars spotted the nightlit sky, nor that the men of Koonga City did not set torchlights on any but the main ways of that den of disaster.

Here the acrid smells were almost as thick and strong as the dark, and under my boots the slime coating the uneven stone pavement was a further risk. While my fear urged me to run, prudence argued that I take only careful step after step, pausing to feel out the way before me. My only guide was an uncertain memory of a city I had known for only ten days, and those not dedicated to the study of geography. Somewhere ahead, if I was lucky, very, very lucky, there was a door. And on that door was set the head of a G.o.dling known to the men of this planet. In the night the eyes of that head would blaze with welcoming light, because behind the door were torches, carefully tended to burn the night through. And if a man being hunted through these streets and lanes for any reason, even fresh blood spilt before half the city for witness, could lay hand upon the latch below those blazing eyes, lift it, to enter the hall beyond, he had sanctuary from all hunters.

My outstretched fingers to the left slid along sweating stone, picking up a foul burden of stickiness as they pa.s.sed. I had the laser in my right hand. It might buy me moments, a few of them, if I were cornered here, but only a few. And I was panting with the effort that had brought me so far, bewildered by the beginning of this nightmare which had certainly not been of my making, nor of Vondar"s.

Vondar - resolutely I squeezed him from my thoughts. There had been no chance for him, not from the moment the four Green Robes had walked so quietly into the taproom, set up their spin wheel (all men there going white or gray of face as they watched those quiet, a.s.sured movements), and touched the wheel into life. The deadly arrow which tipped it whirled fatefully to point out, when it came to rest, he who would be an acceptable sacrifice to the demon they so propitated.

We had sat there as if bound-which indeed we had been, in a sense, by the customs of this d.a.m.nable world. Any man striving to withdraw after that arrow moved would have died, quickly, at the hands of his nearest neighbor. For there was no escape from this lottery. So we had sat there, but not in any fear, as it was not usual that an off-worlder be chosen by the Green Robes. They were not minded to have difficulty thereafter from the Patrol, or from powers beyond their own skies, being shrewd enough to know that a G.o.d may be great on his own world, and nothing under the weight of an unbeliever"s iron fist, when that fist swung down from the stars.

Vondar had even leaned forward a little, studying the faces of those about us with that curiosity of his. He was as satisfied as he ever was, having done good business that day, filled himself with as fine a dinner as these barbarians knew how to prepare, and having gained a lead to a new source of lalor crystals.

Also, had he not unmasked the tricks of Hamzar, who had tried to foist on us a lalor of six carats weight but with a heart flaw? Vondar had triangulated the gem neatly and then pointed that such damage could not be polished out, and that the crystal which might have made Hamzar"s fortune with a less expert buyer was an inferior stone in truth, worth only the price of an extra laser charge.

A laser charge- My fingers crooked tighter about my weapon. I would willingly exchange now a whole bag of lalors for another charge waiting at my belt. A man"s life is ever worth, at least to him, more than the fabled Treasure of Jaccard.

So Vondar had watched the natives in the tavern, and they had watched the spinning arrow of death. Then that arrow had wavered to a halt-pointing at no man directly, but to the narrow s.p.a.ce which existed between Vondar"s shoulder and mine as we sat side by side. And Vondar had smiled then, saying: "It would seem that their demon is somewhat undecided this night, Murdoc." He spoke in Basic, but there were probably those there who understood his words. Even then he did not fear, or reach for a weapon - though I had never known Vondar to be less than alert. No man can follow the life of a gem buyer from planet to planet without having eyes all around his head, a ready laser, and a nose ever sniffing for the taint of danger.

If the demon had been undecided, his followers were not. They came for us. From the long sleeves of their robes suddenly appeared the bind cords used on prisoners they dragged to their lord"s lair. I took the first of those Green Robes, beaming across the table top, which left the wood scorched and smoking. Vondar moved, but a fraction too late. As the Free Traders say, his luck s.p.a.ced, for the man to his left sprang at him, slamming him back against the wall, pinning his hand out of reach of his weapon. They were all yammering at us now, the Green Robes halting, content to let others take the risk in pulling us down.

I caught a second man reaching for Vondar. But the one already struggling with him I dared not ray, lest I get my master too. Then I heard Vondar cry out, the sound speedily smothered in a rush of blood from his lips. We had been forced apart in the struggle and now, as I slipped along the wall, trying to get beam sight on the Green Robes, my shoulders met no solid surface. I stumbled back and out, through a side door into the street.

It was then that I ran, heedlessly at first, then dodging into a deep doorway for a moment. I could hear the hunt behind me. From such hunting there was little hope of escape, for they were between me and the s.p.a.ce port. For a long moment I huddled in that doorway, seeing no possible future beyond a fight to the end.

What fleeting sc.r.a.p of memory was triggered then, I did not know. But I thought of the sanctuary past which Hamzar had taken us, three-four-days earlier. His story concerning it flashed into my mind, though at that instant I could not be sure in which direction that very thin hope of safety might lie.

I tried to push panic to the back of my mind, picture instead the street before me and how it ran in relation to the city. Training has saved many a man in such straits, and training came to my aid now. For memory had been fostered in me by stiff schooling. I was not the son and pupil of Hywel Jern for naught.

Thus and thus-I recalled the running of the streets, and thought I had some faint chance of following them. There was this, also- those who hunted me would deem they had all the advantages, that they need only keep between me and the s.p.a.ce port and I would be easy prey, caught deep in the maze of their unfamiliar city.

I slipped from the shadow of the door and began a weaving which took me, not in the direction they would believe I would be desperately seeking, but veering from it north and west. And so I had come into this alley, slipping and sc.r.a.ping through its noisome muck.

My only guides were two, and to see one I had to look back to the tower of the port. Its light was strong and clear across this dark-skyed world. Keeping it ever at my right, I took it for a reverse signal. The other I could only catch glimpses of now and again as I scuttled from one shadowed s.p.a.ce to the next. It was the watchtower of Koonga, standing tall to give warning against the sudden attacks of the barbarian sea rovers who raided down from the north in the lean seasons of the Great Cold.

The alley ended in a wall. I leaped to catch its crest, my laser held between my teeth. On the top I perched, looking about me, until I decided that the wall would now form my path. It continued to run along behind the buildings, offering none too wide a footing, but keeping me well above ground level. There were dim lights in the back windows of these upper stories, and from one to the next, they served me as beacons.

When I paused now and then to listen, I could hear the murmur of the hunters. They were spreading set from the main streets, into some of the alleys. But they did so cautiously, and I believed they did not face too happily a quarry who might be ready to loose a laser beam from the dark. Time was on their side, for with the coming of dawn, were I still away from the sanctuary, I could be readily picked out of any native gathering by my clothing alone. I wore a modified form of crew dress, suited to the seasoned s.p.a.ce traveler, designed for ease on many different worlds, though not keeping to the uniform coloring of a crewman.

Vondar had favored a dull olive-green for our overtunics, the breast of his worked with the device of a master gemologist. Mine had the same, modified by an apprentice"s two bars. Our boots were magnet-plated for ship wear, and our under garment was of one piece, like a working crewman"s. In this world of long, fringed overrobes and twisted, colored headdresses, I would be very noticeable indeed. There was one small change I could make; I did so now, balancing precariously on my wall perch, once more holding the laser between my teeth as I loosed the seam seal and pulled off my overtunic with its bold blazoning. I rammed it into as small a ball as I could and teetered dangerously over a sc.r.a.p of garden to push it into a fork of branches on a thorn bush. Then I crept along the wall top for the distance of four more houses until I came to the end at the rise of another building. From there I had a choice of leaps - down to a garden, or into the maw of another alley. I would have chosen the alley had I not frozen tight against the house wall at a sound from its depths. Something moved there, but certainly no number of men.

There was the sucking sound of a foot, or feet, lifted out of the slime, and I even thought I could hear the hiss of breathing. Whoever crept there was not moving with the openness of those who quested on my trail.

My hands had been braced against the house wall and now my fingers fell into holes there. I explored by touch and knew that I had come upon one of those geometric patterns which decorated the walls of more important buildings, some parts being intaglio and others projecting. As I felt above me, higher and higher, I began to believe that the pattern might extend clear to the roof and offer me a third way out.

Once more I crouched and this time I unsealed my boots, fastening them to the back of my belt. Then I climbed, after pausing for a long moment to listen to sounds below. They were farther away now, near the mouth of the alley.

Again my schooling came to my aid and I pulled myself up those sharply etched hand and toe holds until I swung over an ornamental parapet, past bold encrustations of demon faces set to frighten off the evil powers of natural forces.

The roof onto which I dropped sloped inward to a middle opening which gave down three floors to a center court with a core pool, into which rain water would feed during the spring storms. It was purposely smoothed to aid in that transfer of rain to reservoir, so I crept beside the parapet, my hands anchoring me from one spike of the wall to the next. But I did so with speed, for even in the dark I could see that now I was only a little away from my goal.

From this height I could see also the s.p.a.ce port.

There were two ships there, one a pa.s.senger-c.u.m-trader, on which that very morning Vondar had taken pa.s.sage for us. It was as far from me now as if half the Dark Dragon curled between. They would know that we had bought pa.s.sage on it and would keep it cordoned. The other, farther away, was a Free Trader. And, while no one normally interfered with one of those or its crew, I could make no claim on it for protection. Even if I reached sanctuary, what further hope would I have? I pushed aside that fear and turned to examine the immediate prospect of getting to the doorway. Now I would have to descend the outer face of the building into a lighted street. There were more bands of decoration and I had little doubt they would make me a ladder, if I could go unsighted. However, torches flamed in brackets along that way, and compared with the back streets through which I had fled, this was as light as a concourse on one of the inner planets.

Few men were abroad so late with legal reason. And I heard no sounds to suggest that the hunt had spread this far. They must rather be patrolling near the field. I had come this far; there was no retreat now. Giving a last searching glance below, I slipped between two of the ornaments and began the descent.

From hold to hold, feeling for those below, trusting to the strength in my fingers and wrists, I worked my way down. I had pa.s.sed the top story when I came upon a window, my feet thudding home on its jutting sill. I balanced there, my hands on either side, my face to the dark interior. And then I was near startled into letting go my grasp by a shrill scream from within.

I was not conscious of making the first few drops of my continued flight down the wall. There was a second scream and a third. How soon would the household be aroused, or attention raised in the street? Finally I let go, fell in a roll. Then, not even stopping to put on my boots, I ran as I had not run before, without looking back to see what fury I had roused.

Along the house walls, sprinting from one patch of shadow to the next, I dashed. Now I could hear cries behind. At the least, the screamer had aroused members of her own household. But there came a street corner and- memory had served me right! I could sight the bright eyes of the G.o.dling on the door. I ran with open mouth, sucking in quick breaths, my boots still fastened to my belt and knocking against my hips, the laser in my hand. On and on - and always I feared to see someone step into the open between me and the face with the blazing eyes. But there was no halting and with a last burst of speed I hit against the portal, my fingers scrabbling for the ring below the head. With a jerk I pulled it. For a second or two the door, contrary to promise, seemed to resist my efforts. Then it gave, and I stumbled into a hall where stood the torches which gave light to the beacon eyes.

I had forgotten the door as I wavered on, intent only on getting inside, away from the rising clamor in the street. Then I tripped and fell forward on my knees. Somehow I squirmed around, the laser ready. Already the door was swinging shut, shutting off a scene of running men, light gleaming on the bared blades they held.

Breathing hard, I watched the door shut by itself, and then was content to sit there for a s.p.a.ce. I had not realized how great the strain of my flight had been until this island of safety held me. It was good simply to sit on the floor of that pa.s.sage and know I need not run.

Finally I roused enough to draw my boots on and look about me. Hamzar"s tale of sanctuary had not gone beyond the few facts of the face on the door and the guarantee that no malefactor could be taken from within. I had expected some type of temple to lie behind such a story. But I was not in the court of any fane now, only in a narrow hall with no doors. Very close to me stood a stone rack in which were set two oilsoaked torches, blazing steadily to form the beacon of the door eyes.

I got to my, feet and rounded that barrier, waiting for a challenge from whoever tended those night lights. With my back to their flames I saw only more corridor, unbroken, shadows at its far end which could veil anything. With some caution I advanced.

Unlike the glimpses I had had into the various other temples of Koonga, these walls were unpainted, being only the native yellow stone such as cobbled the wider streets. The same stone formed the wide blocks of the floor, and as far as I could see, the ceiling as well.

They were worn in places underfoot, as if from centuries of use. Also here and there on the floor were dark splotches following no pattern, which suggested unpleasantly that some of those who had come this way earlier might have suffered hurts during their flight, and that there had been no effort to clean away such traces.

I reached the end of the corridor and discovered it made a sharp turn to the right, one which was not visible until one reached it. To the left was only wall. That new way, being out of the path of the torches, was almost as dark as the alleys. I tried to pierce its dusk, wishing I had a beamer. Finally I turned the laser on lowest energy, sending a white pencil which scored the stained blocks of the flooring, but gave me light.

The new pa.s.sage was only about four paces long. Then I was in a square box of a room and the laser beam touched upon an unlighted torch in the wall bracket. That blazed and I switched off the weapon, blinking. I might have been in a room furnished by one of the cheaper inns. Against the far wall was a basin of stone, into which trickled a small runnel of water, the overflow channeled back into the surface of the wall again.

There was a bedframe fitted with a netting of cords, a matting of dried and faintly aromatic leaves laid over it. Not a comfortable bed, but enough to keep one"s bones from aching too much. There were two stools, a small guesting table set between them. They bore none of the customary carving, but were plain, however smoothed by long use.

In the wall opposite the bed was a niche in which sat a flagon of dull metal, a small basket, and a bell. But there were no doors to the room. And I could see no other exit save the corridor along which I had come. It began to impress me that this vaunted sanctuary was close to a prison, if the trapped dare not venture forth again.

I forced the torch out of its wall hold and carried it about, searching the walls, the ceiling, the floor, to find no break. At last I wedged it back into place. The bell by the flagon next held my attention and I picked it up. A bell suggested signaling. Perhaps it would bring me an explainer- or an explanation. I rang it with as much force as I could get into a snap of the wrist. For so large a bell, it gave forth a very muted tinkle, though I tried it several times, waiting between each for an answer that did not come, until at last I slammed it back into the niche and went to sit on the bed.

When the delayed answer to my impatient summons came, it was startling enough to bring me to my feet, laser drawn. For a voice spoke out of the air seemingly only a few feet away.

"To Noskald you have come, in His Shadow abide for the waning of four torches."

It was a moment before I realized that that voice had not used the lisping speech of Koonga, but Basic. Then they must know me for an off-worlder!

"Who are you?" My own words echoed hollowly as that voice had not. "Let me see you!"

Silence only. I spoke again, first promising awards if my plight was told at the port, or if they would give me help in reaching it. Then I threatened, speaking of ill which came when off-worlders were harmed - though I guessed that perhaps they were shrewd enough to know how hollow those threats were. There was no answer - no sign I was even heard. It could have been a recording which addressed me. And who the guardians here were I did not know either - a priesthood? Then they might be akin to the Green Robes and so would do me no favors, save those forced upon them by custom.

At last I curled into the bed and slept - and dreamed very vivid dreams which were not fancies spun by the unconscious mind, but memories out of the past. So, as it is said a dying man sometimes does, I relived much of my life, which had not been so long in years.

My beginnings were overshadowed by another - Hywel Jern who, in his time, had had a name to be reckoned with on more than one planet - and who could speak with authority in places where even the Patrol must walk with cat-soft feet, fearing to start what would take death and blood to finish.

My father had a past as murky as the shallow inlets of Hawaki after autumn storms. I do not think that any man save himself knew the whole of it; certainly we did not. For years after his death I still came across hints, bits and pieces, which each time opened another door, to show me yet another Hywel Jern. Even when I was young, at times when a coup of more than ordinary cleverness warmed whatever organ served him as a heart, he launched into a tale which was perhaps born out of his own adventuring, though he spoke always of some other man as the actor in it. Always this story was a lesson aimed at impressing upon his listeners some point of bargaining, or of action in crisis. And all his tales made more of things than of people, who were only incidental, being the owners or obtainers of objects of beauty or rarity.

Until he was close to fifty planet years old, he was prime a.s.sessor to the Veep Estampha, a sector boss of the Thieves" Guild. My father never tried to hide this a.s.sociation; in fact it was a matter of pride to him. Since he seemed to have an inborn talent, which he fostered by constant study, for the valuing of unusual loot, he was a valuable man, ranking well above the general core of that illegal combine. However, he appeared to have lacked ambition to climb higher, or else he simply had an astute desire to remain alive and not a target of the ambition of others.

Then Estampha met a rootless Borer plant, which someone with ambition secreted in his private collection of exotic blooms, and came to an abrupt finish. My father withdrew prudently and at once from the resulting scramble for power. Instead he bought out of the Guild and migrated to Angkor.

For a while, I believe, he lived very quietly. But during that period he was studying both the planet and the openings for a lucrative business. It was a spa.r.s.ely settled world on the pioneer level, not one which at that time attracted the attention of those with wealth, nor of the Guild. But perhaps my father had already heard rumors of what was to come.

Within a s.p.a.ce of time he paid court to a native woman whose father operated a small hock-lock for p.a.w.ning, as well as a trading post, near the only s.p.a.ce port. Shortly after his marriage the father-in-law died of an off-world fever, a plague ship having made a crash landing before it could be warned off. The fever also decimated most of the port authorities. But Hywel Jern and his wife proved immune and carried on some of the official duties at this time, which entrenched them firmly when the plague had run its course and the government was restored.

Then, some five years later, the Vultorian star cl.u.s.ter was brought into cross-stellar trade by the Fortuna Combine, and Angkor suddenly came to life as a shipping port of exchange. My father"s business prospered, though he did not expand the original hock-lock.

With his many off-world contacts, both legal and illegal, he did well, but to outward appearances, only in a modest way. All s.p.a.cers sooner or later lay hands on portable treasures or curiosities. To have a buyer who asked no questions and paid promptly was all they wanted at any port where the gaming tables and other planetside amus.e.m.e.nts separated them too fast from flight pay.

This quiet prosperity lasted for years, and appeared to be all my father wanted.

TWO.

If Hywel Jern had contracted his marriage for reasons of convenience, it was a stable one. There were children, myself, Faskel, and Darina. My father took little interest in his daughter, but he early bent more than a little energy to the training of Faskel and me; not that Faskel showed any great promise along the lines Hywel Jern thought important.

It was the custom for us to a.s.semble at a large table in an inner room (we lived over and behind the shop) for the evening meal. And at that time my father would bring out and pa.s.s around some item from his stock, first asking an opinion of it - its value, age, nature. Gems were a pa.s.sion with him and we were forced to learn them as other children might scan book tapes for general knowledge. To my father"s satisfaction I proved an apt pupil. In time he centered most of his instruction on me, since Faskel, either because he could not, or because he stubbornly would not learn, again and again made some mistake which sent our father into one of his cold and silent withdrawals.

I never saw Hywel Jern lose his temper, but his cold displeasure was not to be courted. It was not so much that I feared such censure as that I was really fascinated and interested in what he had to teach. Before I was out of childhood I was allowed to judge the pledges in the shop. And whenever one of the gem merchants who visited my father from time to time came, I was displayed as a star pupil.

So through the years our house became one divided, my mother, Faskel, and Darina on one side, my father and I on the other. And our contact - or mine - with other children of the port was limited, my father drawing me more and more into the shop to learn his old trade of valuing. Some strange and beautiful things pa.s.sed through our hands in those days. Part were sold openly, others remained in his lockboxes, to be offered in private transactions, and of those I did not see all.

There were things from alien ruins and tombs, made before the time that our species burst into s.p.a.ce; there were pieces looted from empires which had vanished into the dust of history so long past that even their planets had been buried. And there were others new from the workshops of the inner systems, where all the creative art of a jeweler is unleashed to catch the eye of a Veep with a bottomless purse.

My father liked the old pieces the most. Sometimes he would hold a necklet, or a bracelet (which by its form had never been meant to encircle a human wrist) and speculate about who had worn it and the civilization from which it had come. And he demanded of those who brought him such trinkets as clear a history of their discovery as he could obtain, putting on tapes all he could learn.

I think that these tapes in themselves might have proven a rich treasure house for seekers of strange knowledge, and I have wondered since if Faskel ever suspected their worth and used them so. Perhaps he did, for in some ways he proved to be more shrewd than my father.

In one of our round-table meetings after an evening meal my father produced such an alien curiosity. He did not pa.s.s it from hand to hand as was his wont, but laid it on the wellpolished board of dead-black creel wood and sat staring at it as if he were one of the fakirs from the dry lands seeking to read a housewife"s future in a polished seed pod.

It was a ring, or at least it followed that form. But the band must have been made for a finger close to the size of two of ours laid together. The metal was dull, pitted, as if from great age.

Its claw setting held a stone bigger than my thumbnail, in proper proportion to the band. And it was as dull and unappealing as the metal, colorless, no sparkle or hint of life in it. Also, the longer one studied it, the more the idea grew in mind that this was the corpse of something which might have once had life and beauty but was long since dead. I had, at that first viewing, a disinclination to touch it, though I was always avid to examine these bits and pieces my father used for our instruction.

"Out of another tomb? I wish you would not bring these corpse ornaments to the table!" My mother spoke more sharply than was usual. At that time it struck me odd that she, whom I thought immune to imaginative fancies, had also so quickly a.s.sociated the ring with death.

My father did not raise his eyes from the ring. Rather he spoke to Faskel in the voice he used when he would be answered, and at once.

"What make you of this?"

My brother put out his hand as if to touch the ring and then jerked it back again. "A ring - too large to wear. Maybe a temple offering."

To that my father made no comment. Instead he said to Darina: "And you see what?"

"It is cold- so cold-" My sister"s thin voice trailed off, and then she pushed away from the table. "I do not like it."

"And you?" My father turned to me at last.

Temple offering it might have been, fashioned larger than life to fit on the finger of some G.o.d or G.o.ddess. I had seen such things pa.s.s through my father"s hands before. And some of them had had that about them which gave one a queasy feeling upon touching. But if any G.o.d had worn this- No, I did not believe it had been made for such a purpose. Darina was also right. It evoked a sensation of cold, as well as of death. However, the more I studied it, the more it fascinated me. I wanted to touch, yet I feared. And it seemed to me that my feeling reflected something about the ring which made it more than any other gem I had seen, though it was now but age-pitted metal set with a lifeless stone.

"I do not know - save that it is - or was - a thing of power!" And my certainty of that fact was such that I spoke more loudly than I had meant to, so my final word rang through the room.

"Where did it come from?" Faskel asked quickly, hunching forward again and putting out his hand as if to lay it over ring and stone, though his fingers only hovered above it. In that moment I had the thought that he who did take it firmly would be following the custom of gem dealers: to close hand about a jewel was to accept an offered bargain. But if that were so, Faskel did not quite dare to accept such "a challenge, for he drew back his hand a second time.

"From s.p.a.ce," my father returned.

There are gems out of s.p.a.ce - primitive peoples pay high sums to own them. What forms them we are not quite sure even yet. The accepted theory is that they are produced when bits of meteor of the proper metallic composition pa.s.s through the blaze of a planet"s atmosphere. It was the fad for a while to make s.p.a.ce Captains" rings out of these tekt.i.tes. I have seen several such, centuries old, which must have been worn by the first s.p.a.ce venturers. But this gem, if gem it really was, bore no resemblance to those, for it was not dark green, black, or brown, but a colorless crystal, dulled as if sand had pitted the surface deeply.

"It does not look like a tekt.i.te- I ventured.

My father shook his head. "It was not formed in s.p.a.ce, not that I know of - it was found there." He leaned back in his chair and took up his cup of folgar tea, sipping absent-mindedly as he continued to stare at the ring. "A curious tale-"

"We expect Councilor Sands and his lady-" my mother interrupted abruptly, as if she knew the tale and wanted not to hear it again. "The hour grows late." She started to gather our cups, then raised her hands to clap for Staffla, our serving maid.

"A curious tale," my father repeated as if he had not heard her at all. And such was his hold over his household that she did not summon Staffla, but sat, moving a little uneasily, plainly unhappy.

"But a true one - of that I am sure," my father continued. "This was brought in today by the first officer of the Astra. They had a grid failure in mid-pa.s.sage and had to come out of hyper for repairs. Their luck continued bad, for they had a holing from a meteor pebble. It was necessary then to patch the hull as well." He was telling this badly, not as he usually spun such stories, but more as one who would keep strictly to facts, and those were meager. "Kjor was doing the patch job when he saw it- a floater - He beamed out on his stay line and brought it in - a body in a suit. Not"- my father hesitated- "of any species he knew. And it had been there a long time. It wore this over its suit glove." He pointed to the ring.

Over the glove of a s.p.a.ce suit-the strangeness of that indeed made one wonder. The gloves are supple enough; they have to be if a man wears them in outer s.p.a.ce for ship repair, or while exploring a planet deadly to his species. But why would anyone want to wear an ornament over such a glove? I must have asked that aloud for my father answered: "Why indeed? Certainly not for any reason of show. Therefore - this had importance, vast importance to him who wore it. Enough that I would like to know it better."

"There are tests," Faskel observed.

"This is a gem stone, unknown to me, and twelve on the Mobs scale-"

"A diamond is ten-"

"And a Javsite eleven," my father returned. "Heretofore that was the measuring rod. This is something beyond our present knowledge."

"The Inst.i.tute-" began my mother, but my father put out his hand and cupped the ring in it, hiding it from sight. So hidden, he restored it to a small bag and slipped that into his inner tunic pocket.