"You - you - " Words dissolved in a small scream, as the young woman dashed past Harry to grab her husband and hug him fiercely.

Alan hugged her back, but he also wanted to talk. "Lily, I wrote you a letter, a few days ago, explaining some things that have happened, but here you are. You must have left home before it arrived."

Now Lily, in the excess of her relief, was turning angry. "What in hell was the idea, running off the way you did? I thought you'd been kidnapped!"

"Well, no, not really. Not exactly."

"I could murder you," Alan's wife told him, then she abruptly fell silent, shot out a hand and grabbed the full sleeve of the distinctive religious garment Alan was wearing, a kind of long shirt. Harry had noticed that other people in the crowded square were dressed in the same way.

Lily shook him by his sleeve, then pushed him off at arm's length. "What've you done? Taken some kind of vows?"

"Vows? Oh, this?" He brushed his fingers over the pale fabric. "No, it's just that this is more or less required, as long as I'm still living in the Malako dorm - it's a kind of bachelor quarters, for men in training."

Her anger gone as quickly as it had come, Lily was sobbing. Harry could understand that; he even thought he might be entitled to a good cry, too - though probably not in public. He was thinking of all the time and energy he'd wasted, conned by a smuggler into almost believing the worst of this unhappy girl. It was no longer possible to doubt that she was straight and innocent - unless she was not only the queen of smugglers, but had hired someone to play the part of Alan, and was also the greatest actress in the Galaxy. Anyway, the greatest actress was not going to break her neck and strain her tear ducts just to convince an obscure space pilot of her virtue.

Alan's response to his wife's outpouring of tears and emotion was mainly to look numb, and maintain a slightly confused attitude.

Tentatively approaching Lily again, the husband held her and patted her on her back. Alan, looking over her shoulder at Harry, at last showed some curiosity. "Who's this?"

Lily turned and looked. Then she let go of Alan and backed away from him a step. "Alan, this is Mr. Silver. Harry Silver. He's the pilot who drove me here, he's been helping me look for you."

Alan extended his hand and muttered a greeting. Harry stepped forward to briefly take the hand, which was almost limp, and grunted something back.

Lily had seized her long-lost man again, and was holding him at arm's length, gripping him fiercely by the shoulders. "Let me look at you. That silly shirt... And you look thinner. Have you been fasting, or - "

"Fasting?" It was as if Alan had no idea what the word might mean. "Oh. No, not really, they don't require anything like that. But" - he paused for a deep breath - "Lil, there are some things I have to bring you up to date on."

But before he began any explanation, a new thought seemed to come to him, striking a spark of excitement. Alan turned back to Harry.

"Look, Mr. - Silver, is it? - did you, by any chance, come to Maracanda looking for an investment opportunity?"

Harry blinked. He leaned back against a wall of strange Maracandan stone and folded his arms. "Well, no. That's not why I came. But I might consider something. What've you got in mind?"

"What do I have in mind? Just a break like nothing you've ever seen before. One of the greatest opportunities that any human being has ever been offered. The chance of a lifetime! Literally!" As Alan spoke, new animation grew swiftly in his voice. He put his arm around Lily again, as if she might be the prize to be awarded. He seemed totally unconscious of her growing confusion as she listened to him.

"Tell me more," said Harry, watching and listening with fascination.

Alan's face was glowing with enthusiasm. "There are opportunities here on Maracanda that ninety-nine percent of the people in the Galaxy have yet to learn about..."

It was a real sales pitch, Harry thought, and a fairly good one. Something to do with land and property and minerals, though Alan was slow to specify exactly what it was he had to sell. Meanwhile, the real show was Lily. Her expression was slowly changing, joy so intense as to be painful passing slowly through confusion, sliding downhill into a kind of outrage.

Finally she managed to interrupt the pitch. It took her a couple of tries to get the salesman's full attention back. Her voice had turned dangerously mild.

"Alan, you're babbling. Minerals and properties? What in hell are you talking about?"

Turning the spiel on Lily, Alan seized one of her small hands in both of his. "Honey, now I can understand what the real meaning of it all is."

"Of it all?"

"Of life, and everything - you must see it, too!"

"See what?" It seemed possible that she was going to faint.

Alan was a long way from fainting. He might be thin, but he was bursting with energy. "I mean what fate had in store for me. The real purpose of my coming to this strange world. I was led to Maracanda. Consciously I didn't understand it myself until these last few days, but now everything is coming clear."

"Clear?"

"Yes!"

"But - Alan, That note you left me, what about that? Saying that the only thing in the whole universe that had any genuine importance, any meaning for humanity, was - that." She shot an accusing gesture across the busy square, toward the looming Portal. "Malako."

Alan cast one brief, bored glance in that direction, humoring his wife. Then he turned back to her. "That's what I thought, then, Lil. Of course, that's what I thought" He might have been trying to explain to her some foolish exploit of his childhood, decades in the past. Now he could be tolerant of such youthful folly, because, after all, it had ultimately led him in the right direction.

Enthusiasm came welling up again. "But now, since I've seen Maracanda, been exposed to the possibilities, it's hit me. What Malako represents is no more than a kid's dream. An important symbol, maybe, but no more than that. The real value of this world does not lie over there Across the square, or off in the center of the Galaxy, in places where people can never go. No!" He made a gesture, thrusting something violently away.

"Noo! What people need, what we really need, it's here! Right here!" Alan stamped his foot hard on the pavement. "The truth we need is real and accessible, part of the world we live on. Minerals, Lily, hard, solid minerals. This world is a treasure trove of awesome wealth. Literally! And we, you and I, can have our share."

"Oh." Alan's wife was backing away from him again, one step and then another, her face a study in horrified understanding. "You've done it again. Haven't you?"

Now her voice was mounting to a scream. "Do you know, do you know, you fool, you almost had me thinking Malako, believing it? Getting myself ready to kneel down and pray?"

"Actually, they don't kneel down. They - "

"Shut up, you imbecile! I should have known. I should have known you were going to do something like this. After all the years we've been together, all the plans you've made and dropped, I should have known."

Alan blinked at her, waiting until she should be ready to listen to him again.

"I should have known," Lily repeated in a murmur, as if mostly to herself. "But let me make sure. Once more I ask. What about that note you left me?"

"The note I left you," repeated Alan. He had to make an effort to remember. "Didn't I just explain about the note?"

"Did you?"

"Oh yes, I can see how what I said in the note would have misled you. But never mind that now, Lil. Or, if you want to look at it that way, just think that my coming here might really have been divinely inspired - because this world, Lil, is like no other. What we have on Maracanda. can transform our lives, and the universe, right here and now!" He paused. "How much money have you got available?"

She moved away from him, stumbling back toward Harry, leaning on the wall where Harry leaned, closing her eyes briefly. Then she looked at her husband again.

"Practically nothing. I spent it all, chasing you halfway across the Galaxy. I'm almost broke!" The last words came out as a cry of fear and anger.

"Well, if there's anything at all, I'd like to know how much, because - "

"Don't say any more, Alan. Don't say any more!"

Harry, arms folded, was still leaning against the building, shaking his head. Slowly Alan turned back to him, and asked: "Did you say Lil's been paying you to help her find me?"

Harry said: "She's paid me for her ticket to Maracanda. Neither of you owe me anything. As far as any incidental help I might have given her, well, I'm being amply rewarded for that."

"Oh?" Alan's eyes were vague.

Harry said: "Educationally, I mean. Looking for you has been a valuable experience. And finding you even more so."

Alan didn't quite know what to make of that. Clearly he would rather be talking about investments. Alan's trouble now was that he had no money of his own to invest. Or at least he thought that was his trouble.

After a bit, Harry straightened and stretched, getting ready to move on. "Well, shall I assume you two are going to be staying together from now on?" That was the polite thing to say, Harry judged, though at the moment the great reunion seemed a long way from a sure thing. "Lily, should I tell Kul you're moving out?"

"No," said Lily firmly. She had straightened up, standing against the wall almost as if awaiting the firing squad. "If Mr. Bulaboldo doesn't mind, I might not be moving out of his house just yet. I understand it's hard to find a place to stay in Tomb

Town." Standing with her hands clasped, almost as if in prayer, she kept staring uncertainly at her husband, as if trying to remember who he was.

The look that Alan gave her was uncertain, too. "That'd right, housing is very hard to come by," he admitted. "Unless you're very well off. That's why I'm still sleeping in the Malako men's dorm, still wearing this shirt. Women aren't allowed in there." He looked around suddenly, as if he thought someone might be watching. "It's also the reason I'm here in the square now. As long as you're living in the dorm, they expect you to kind of go through the motions, coming here and putting on a public show."

"You go on putting on your show, then, Alan." Lil turned to the man beside her. "Harry, take me back to where we're staying. I need to do some thinking, and I can't do it here."

The more Lily tried to come to grips with Alan's latest change of heart and mind, the angrier she grew. "I might have known it. He's done this before. If I face the facts, I can see he's done it over and over. Decided to devote his life to something, and then, in a few months or a year, quit it for something else. Well, now he's done it once too often."

Harry grunted something. He tried to give it a friendly and slightly upbeat tone.

Bulaboldo to all appearances was glad to see them both. Lily went off to rest in her room, with Kul's blessings, while he summoned Harry into an urgent conference.

It came out that Kul had his own ideas about the reason for Harry's attempted kidnapping. "And I'll wager, dear lad, that it had nothing to do with Dr. Kloskurb."

"No? You heard them use the name."

"Not sure I did, old fellow, and anyway I've got to take my idea more seriously. You see, the competition in my business becomes rather intense at times. I know why my rivals want to get their hands on you. I just wonder which of them it was."

Bulaboldo went on to say he could, without even trying very hard, think of at least three possibilities.

"Or it might even have been someone entirely new, just trying to break into the business. All masked, couldn't tell." The bulky one, looking distracted, chewed a thumbnail while he thought. "Except for the lad in the hospital, of course, and he was a total stranger to me. No knowledge to be gained there."

"You fought them," Harry said. "And maybe you saved my life. But there at the end you were sitting on me. Because you didn't want any of 'em caught."

"No, of course I didn't." Bulaboldo shook his head. "Best not to have the authorities come bumbling in, interfering with business matters. Under interrogation the question would be sure to come up - why do smugglers on Maracanda need a pilot?"

"I give up, why do they? You're getting paranoid. Those people weren't looking for a pilot. They thought I was someone else entirely. Doctor Kloskurb. I've seen him and talked to him, he looks like me."

Bulaboldo wasn't convinced. "So do a million other people, Harry. I think they knew just who you are."

"So your competitors want a pilot for the same mysterious reason you do. Am I right?"

"As always, dear man." The big man sighed, clapped both hands down hard on the arms of his chair, making a decision. "Very well. The time has come to show you, which means going out of the city, deep into breakdown zone. I'm changing clothes for the back country, and would suggest you do the same. Your closet should be well supplied, but let me know if there are any deficiencies."

Retiring to their respective rooms, the men met again on the main floor ten minutes later. Bulaboldo had now put on work-man's or miner's clothes that made quite a change in his appearance. Harry had changed his spacefarer's garb for something that would attract less notice out in the back country: a different style of boots, rugged shirt and pants with lots of pockets, and a small indicator, strapped on the wrist, to tell whether he was currently in a breakdown zone.

They went into the large garage, high walled and roofed for privacy. Bulaboldo had thrown a few odd-looking lightweight tools, some kind of digging implements, into a pedicab's small cargo compartment. He opened a large chest nearby, and Harry saw that it held an assortment of clubs, knives, and swords.

"By the way, old thing, would you like to carry a weapon? You may need it for self-defense."

"What've you got? I've begun to appreciate that Maracanda is that kind of place."

Opening another drawer, Kul displayed a couple of modern handguns, butts curved to make handy bludgeons. "Useful in either kind of zone when trouble rears its ugly head."

"Expecting any?"

"Not specifically. I wasn't looking for it the other night in the caravanserai, either. One's business has grown extremely competitive in recent months."

"You're still convinced that fumble-fingered kidnapping had something to do with your business. This is where I ought to ask just what your business is these days. But I don't know if I will."

Bulaboldo nodded. "Not a secret. Not to you, old lad. But, as I say, easier to show than tell." He pointed at one of the long blades. "Know how to use one of these, old man?"

Gingerly Harry picked up the weapon by its short handle and gave it an intense look. "Not the fine points. The general idea seems clear enough." He essayed a few tentative motions, butchering the air, then decided he had probably better leave the sword where it was. Instead he pocketed one of the club-handled pistols.

The vehicle in which Harry and Bulaboldo set out to examine Kul's mining claims was a pedicar, light in weight but ruggedly constructed, on a framework resembling a four-wheeled bicycle. Behind the forward-mounted motor, the reasonably comfortable cabin contained four seats, all enclosed by a light but sturdy shell. Plainly it wouldn't be this vehicle's first trip into the back country. Its lower surfaces, formed of some hard, off-world metal alloy, had acquired a smeary look, ingrained with particles impossible to clean away, that showed it had spent a large number of hours in contact with Maracandan dust and solid land.

After making sure there was food and water on board, they took their places in the two front seats, Bulaboldo with the steering lever in hand. You had to step up into the vehicle, which was built high for good ground clearance and off-road use. A small engine compartment held a hydrogen lamp or fuel cell, to drive the wheels in the free-zone stretches of road.

Harry was sitting back, trying to relax, letting Bulaboldo drive. "The question I ask myself is, what do your mining claims have to do with my getting my ship back? It doesn't take a lot of heavy thinking to get an answer, and the answer's getting clearer and clearer every second. But I'd like to hear the official version anyway."

"Very perceptive of you, Harry. There is a connection to be discovered."

"So tell me."

"Easier to show than tell - and much easier to show you if we're on the ground. All will presently be revealed."

They were heading away from the center of town, through moderate traffic. "What's that?" Harry's finger was pointing at a small, unlabeled indicator light, near the center of the dashboard.

"Shows where we are, old friend. Comes on only when the vehicle's not in a breakdown zone, and therefore can be engine-driven. Otherwise one does not know when one has crossed the invisible border, and one might keep pedaling on and on, exhausting oneself unnecessarily."

Bulaboldo went on: "Trouble is, there are many stretches of road in this region where the bloody little light goes on and off every fifty meters or so. Not really worth the trouble to try to sit back and relax."

Harry wondered again, silently this time, why any Earth-descended humans wanted to live on this enchanted world at all. But no, in his heart he understood. The very oddities, the implicit dangers, the absolute cursedness of the place, drew certain people like powerful magnets.

Alan had heard Bulaboldo's name when Harry and Lily were talking in the square, and wasted no time in consulting a city directory and finding his way to Bulaboldo's house. He had discarded his Temple Malako shirt and was plainly and cheaply clad when he arrived on the doorstep demanding to see his wife.

Lily, responding to a summons delivered to her room by one of the household robots, met her husband in the doorway - the robots had pointedly not invited him inside. She saw that he had somehow come up with enough money to hire a pedicab, though not a driver.

Alan was taut and earnest. "Come take a ride with me, Lil. We've got to talk things over."

Soon they were standing beside the pedicar, debating. Alan, trying to calm her down, promised he would do all the pedaling. "Take it easy, Lil - I was going to send for you, once I got myself established on this world. By the way, this is a pretty posh place, where you're staying."

"It's not mine, and it's not going to be. And if you're think-ing of asking the proprietor to invest in your schemes, I'd think again. He has schemes of his own."

Alan displayed certain signs of jealousy, of Harry Silver's apparent role in Lily's life. If his wife had suddenly turned against him, it must be this interloper's fault. But even jealousy was hard to sustain, when all her husband could really think about was the possibility of going prospecting, and of investment, in land, in mineral rights.

"Lil, I can see how this would upset you. I've sometimes been undependable in the past. But this time it's going to be different. You'll see."

Before Lily could answer, another cab pulled up. For just a moment she thought the man getting out was actually Harry.

But it was Dr. Kloskurb, who bowed to her courteously. "Ms. Gunnlod. Is Harry Silver here? That attempted kidnapping has been preying on my mind, and I have some questions I'd like to ask him."

Harry and Kul were nearing the city's edge, on a different route than Harry had ever gone before. He asked: "Ever think of hiring someone to pedal for you?"

"Oh, that's easy enough to do, my boy. Lots of failed prospectors in town, available at modest wages. But that wouldn't do in this case, where particularly confidential matters are to be shown and discussed. Unless you're applying for the position..."

His voice trailed off as he studied the pedicar's small side mirror. "By the way, it would seem that we are being followed. Oh, not to take alarm, dear lad. I detect Ms. Lily Gunnlod, and two men I do not recognize. One of them looks a lot like you."

Harry turned in his seat and stared. The tailing driver was trying to be cagey, hanging back, but there did seem to be three people in the cab. One was almost certainly Lily, and the other two could very well be Alan and Dr. Kloskurb.

They were just at the edge of the settlement when the indicator light on the dash suddenly went out. Simultaneously the engine died, and they were coasting.

Bulaboldo reacted without surprise. "Time for the pedals. Ever ride a bicycle, old man? These work much the same. You'll notice that your seat is provided with a set as well."

Harry took the hint, and lifted his feet from the fixed rests where they had been idling.

With two men working their pedals, not trying very hard, the lightweight vehicle crept forward at the pace of a brisk walk.

For the next five or six kilometers, the road was fairly busy with similar traffic. But by the time they had taken a third branching, onto a smaller way so faintly marked as to be almost invisible, they were alone. The vehicle that had been following them was out of sight.

"This could get to be fun." Harry had increased his effort slightly. Maintaining the pace of a brisk trot was not too difficult, except when going uphill.

"For those of us addicted to exercise, dear lad." Bulaboldo puffed.

Road signs were scarce, but Bulaboldo had no problem finding his way, steering dexterously among the towering landforms, going around some ominous gaping holes in the landscape.

Harry said: "Looks like it could be easy to get lost in these hills."

"All too easy. Then one has to wait for approaching nightfall to get even a rough idea of one's directions - east and west."

Harry was determined to learn all he could. "What about a simple magnetic compass? I mean, if east and west have been more or less established, why not north and south?"

"It's been tried, old comrade. With mixed results. Too mixed, I fear, to inspire any confidence at all."

Harry spotted a stretch of flat ground broad enough to have done service as an athletic field, studded with chair-sized objects evidently meant as markers of some kind, all of foreign material, stone and wood and metal. Text of some kind was engraved on them, too far away to read.

He reached across the little cab to tap his companion's shoulder, and pointed. "What's that over there?"

Bulaboldo looked. "Cemetery. On this world, as on others, there are a lot of people who just don't go for cremation."

"I suppose being buried on Maracanda would not be dull, maybe not even peaceful."

"In that you are correct, dear coconspirator. The interment of dead bodies or anything else in Maracandan land is by no means as simple and straightforward an operation as you would expect. Making bridges is also a chancy undertaking."

Bulaboldo pedaled on a few more meters before he added: "Those who are looking for peace should be living somewhere else."

The territory declared open to prospecting encompassed many hundreds (maybe thousands; Bulaboldo said he wasn't sure) of square kilometers. There was a general fear that the Federation would change the rules, as soon as the undesirable nature of some of the minerals here became generally known.

The weird landscape of this portion of the Maracandan surface was honeycombed by a number of branching trails and roads, pocked and dotted by miners' adits and simple, amateurish holes. Here and there were also some big natural caves, mouths almost big enough to have accommodated Harry's ship - if any ship could have landed in this region.

Along the main roads, which were wide enough for vehicles to pass each other, signs, official postings, establishing claims, appeared every five hundred meters or so. Some of the signs had been all but effaced by the climbing, infiltrating landscape.

Harry and Bulaboldo passed several sites where people were in the act of prospecting for the legitimate ore, and another one or two where people were trying to dig it out. Unlike any other mining operation that Harry had ever witnessed, these were being conducted entirely without advanced machinery. Primitive, muscle-powered picks and shovels seemed to be the tools of choice.

People had set up camp inside a lightly fenced-off area. Tent walls provided privacy, shielding part of the works from observation, and in some cases made it impossible to tell with a glance whether any of the claim owners were actually on site or not.

But there were some indications of success. Enthusiastic men and women were digging energetically, grunting and sweating, their tools powered by no technology more advanced than the digger's own muscles. Greed was giving them grim strength and purpose.

The side road had degenerated to a mere trail when Bulaboldo stopped pedaling and put on the brakes. He had chosen a spot that to Harry looked pretty much like any other.

The big man got out and stretched, then made an expansive pointing gesture. "My land starts here. Runs back that way, far as that green outcropping, and over there." One hectare of land - as big a playing field as you were likely to see inside a real-world sports stadium.

"Been digging on it?"

"In a couple of places. Here, at what you might call the front, just a little bit, for show."

Wooden stakes had been tapped into the claylike surface as property markers. Little ribbons tied to the stakes barely stirred in the faint breeze. Diggings had been started, then abandoned, at several spots across the hectare.

"Looks like a hard-luck claim," Harry observed.

"That's just how I want it to look." Grinning, the proprietor got one of the digging tools out of the pedicar's trunk, stuck one of the clubs in his belt ("Just in case. There've been claim jumpers around"), and indicated to Harry which way they should walk. "Did have hard luck for a while. But I don't think we'll give up on her just yet."

Harry looked at his companion for a moment, then picked up the other club, stuck it in the long, narrow pocket on the right thigh of his coveralls.

"Let me show you something." Bulaboldo closed the pedicar's doors, turned a key in the simple door lock, and led the way on foot.

There were a few tracks here, old random boot marks slowly turning into neat abstract patterns in the peculiar ground.