"—heat; it's the humidity!" Cantrell grinned in the darkness. "Yeah, yeah. Well, you can stand it for forty days. Say!" He sat up abruptly, snapping his fingers on sudden thought. "If we could hire a couple of those little S'zetnurs to locate sola veins for us, we could cut down the time ... put the Geiger crew on one of the spare refiners! Hire me one tomorrow, will you? A couple, I mean—two of the older ones, with rudimentary fingers and toes. They should know their way around better.... Cripes! You can see how their race has deteriorated, each generation a little bit worse than the one before ... the poor devils!"
"Yeah." Harris plucked Cantrell's cigarette-glow from the darkness to take a drag. "But we're going to fix all that for them! Vital food, in return for vital solaranium.... Why, it's a natural for trade-relations between S'zetnu and Terra!" He blew out smoke, returned the cigarette. "El Presidente's sure to give each of us a citation—with bonus! I can just see my old lady spending it now. On a Martian vurna-fur coat! She's been whining for one ever since...."
Cantrell chuckled drowsily, then sighed. "I wish I hadn't kicked that little guy. Feel like a heel. Wish I hadn't given that woman my spacewatch, too, in a loose moment! What time is it?"
"88-zero, shiptime," the astrogator murmured. "Go to sleep, will ya?... I wish I was back on Tee with my baby tonight...."
Silence fell. Outside, the refiners chugged rhythmically, melting away the solaranium from the crude ore wheeled in by the miners. At a little distance from the camp, the Geiger experts were moving their counters over the ground, seeking the highly-fissionable ore. The sola shortage had shut down the industries of Terra for five years now, and sent many a rocket-ship out into space, searching, searching ... until now, at last, the search was ended on a tiny planet Z-north of the System. Close! Near enough to organize a freight-lane!
But in the forest, the pallid forest beyond the camp, a gargoyle-woman lay buried, clinging to her deformed half-idiot baby who had died with her. Cantrell's spacewatch glinted on her stumpy wrist; mute testimony that she must be eliminated, according to the ancient law that the Elders remembered. It was strangely unfair—for there were others, many others in the tribe, who were far more hideous than she! Mitka, who had only a hole for a nose, and Jura, whose ears were unformed knobs on either side of her head ... but that, of course, was for the Beautiful Ones to judge. Their word had always been the Law....
Around noon the next day, Harris reported glumly to the central tent. Cantrell, hard at work on a sheaf of forms, glanced up, his eyes preoccupied.
"Harris? Did you get those guides?"
Harris spread his hands. "No can find! I've had men out combing the forest all day. Can't find a sign of those little pixies! They've just vanished!"