Wellesley's ship was accustomed to describe an elliptical orbit which brought it near the system containing Ophir once every seventh side-real month. It never stopped. Its course was as inexorable as a comet's; nevertheless, he had lately received the commission of an errand here for the omnipotent Department of Genetics and Genealogical Records.
And so he was forced to make landfall in a rocket tender in a meadow by Aidennsport, while the ground quaked dangerously beneath the settling blasts of the tiny vessel. He located the single course of the village without difficulty. Half a dozen ragged children were playing there, and stopped to stare. Women peered at his dark uniform from behind curtains in the stained, milk-colored bungalows. Quaintly dressed men, tending the auto-pickers in nearby fields of drug-plant, shaded their eyes to gaze with silent menace, though there was no sun.
He was able to find the house of the agent by the frayed company flag flying over it. To the right of it was the warehouse where the annual crop of senna-like leaves of the drug-plant were stored for drying. This was Aidennsport's meagre industry. Beyond lay the swamp, and far across its desolate surface, the multi-colored towers of the pipes fingered the sky, aloof and sinister in aspect.
A boy of no more than ten, dark eyed but with that startling, burnished-gold complexion so often found in the systems of twin or multiple suns, sat upon the steps before the cottage. He was playing with a furry animal not unlike a Martian ferrax, which sprang up, scarlet-eyed and bristling, at the sight of Wellesley.
"Here, boy," said Wellesley, who neither liked nor trusted children. "Is this the house of Amos Sealilly, the factor of Aidennsport?"
"Sure. That's my pa. Say, are you a spaceman?"
"Never mind that. Where is your father?"
"In the warehouse," the boy said. "I'll show you how to get inside. My name's Joseph, and I have a spaceship in the back yard. I call it the Stygia, after the pirate ship of the twenty-eighth century. Do you want to see my crew?"
"Later, perhaps," said Wellesley dryly. "Come along, now."
They found tall, aluminum doors which slid back at the wave of a hand, and entered into a vastness of cool gloom, permeated by a spicelike odor of curing leaves.