and he belly-flopped on the floor.
The burglar, if it was one, didn't dash smoothly and efficiently for the door. He straightened himself against the window and said resignedly:
'You need not fear. I will make no resistance.'
Alen rolled from the hammock and helped the trader to his feet. 'He said he doesn't want to fight,' he told the trader.
Blackbeard siezed the intruder and shook him like a rat.
'So the rogue is a coward too!' he boomed. 'Give us a light, Herald.'
Alen uncovered the slow-match, blew it to a flame, squeak-fly pumped up a pressure torch until a jet of pulverized coal sprayed from its nozzle and ignited it. A dozen strokes more and there was enough heat feeding back from the jet to maintain the pressure cycle.
Through all of this the trader was demanding in his broken Lyran:
'What make here, thief? What reason thief us room?'
The Herald brought the hissing pressure lamp to the window. The intruder's face was not the unhealthy, neurotic face of a criminal. Its thin lines told of discipline and thought.
'What did you want here?' asked Alen.
'Metal,' said the intruder simply. 'I thought you might have a bit of iron.'
It was the first time a specific metal had been named by any Lyran. He used, of course, the Vegan word for iron.
'You are particular,' remarked the Herald. 'Why iron?'
'I have heard that it possesses certain properties—perhaps you can tell me before you turn me over to the police. Is it true, as we hear, that a mass of iron whose crystals have been aligned by a sharp blow will strongly attract another piece of iron with a force related to the distance between them?'
'It is true,' said the Herald, studying the man's face. It was lit with excitement. Deliberately Alen added: 'This alignment is more easily and uniformly effected by placing the mass of iron in an electric field—
that is, a space surrounding the passage of an electron stream through a conductor.' Many of the words he used had to be Vegan; there were no Lyran words for 'electric,' 'electron' or 'conductor.'
The intruder's face fell. 'I have tried to master the concept you refer to,'
he admitted. 'But it is beyond me. I have questioned other interstar voyagers and they have touched on it, but I cannot grasp it— But thank you, sir; you have been very courteous. I will trouble you no further while you summon the watch.'
'You give up too easily,' said Alen. 'For a scientist, much too easily. If we turn you over to the watch, there will be hearings and testimony and whatnot. Our time is limited here on your planet; I doubt that we can spare any for your legal processes.'
The trader let go of the intruder's shoulder and grumbled:
'Why you no ask we have iron, I tell you no. Search, search, take all metal away. We no police you. I sorry hurted you arms. Here for you.'
Blackboard brought out a palmful of his sample gems and picked out a large triple-fire stone. 'You not be angry me,' he said, putting it, in the Lyran's hand.
'I can't—' said the scientist.
Blackbeard closed his fingers over the stone and growled: 'I give, you take. Maybe buy iron with, eh?'
'That's so,' said the Lyran. 'Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you—'
'You go,' said the trader. 'You go, we sleep again.'
The scientist bowed with dignity and left their room.
'Gods of space,' swore the trader. 'To think that Jukkl, the Starsong's wiper, knows more about electricity and magnetism than a brainy fellow like that.'
'And they are the key to physics,' mused Alen. 'A scientist here is dead-ended forever, because their materials are all insulators! Glass, clay, glaze, wood.'
'Funny, all right,' yawned blackbeard. 'Did you see me collar him once I got on my feet? Sharp, eh? Good night, Herald.' He gruntingly hauled himself into the hammock again, leaving Alen to turn off the hissing light and cover the slow-match with its perforated lid.
They had roast fowl of some sort or other for breakfast in the public dining room. Alen was required by his Rule to refuse the red wine that went with it. The trader gulped it approvingly. 'A sensible, though backward people,' he said. 'And now if you'll inquire of the management where the thievish jewel-buyers congregate, we can get on with our business and perhaps be off by dawn tomorrow.'
'So quickly?' asked Alen, almost forgetting himself enough to show surprise.
'My charter on Starsong, good Herald—thirty days to go, but what might not go wrong in space? And then there would be penalties to mulct me of whatever minute profit I may realize.'
Alen learned that Gromeg's Tavern was the gem mart and they took another of the turbine-engined cabs through the brick-paved streets.
Gromeg's was a dismal, small-windowed brick barn with heavy-set men lounging about, an open kitchen at one end and tables at the other. A score of smaller, sharp-faced men were at the tables sipping wine and chatting.
'I am Journeyman-Herald Alen,' announced Alen clearly, 'with Vegan gems to dispose of.'
There was a silence of elaborate unconcern, and then one of the dealers spat and grunted: 'Vegan gems. A drug on the market. Take them away, Herald.'
'Come, master trader,' said Alen in the Lyran tongue. 'The gem dealers of Lyra do not want your wares.' He started for the door.
One of the dealers called languidly: 'Well, wait a moment. I have nothing better to do; since you've come all this way I'll have a look at your stuff.'
'You honor us,' said Alen. He and blackbeard sat at the man's table.
The trader took out a palmful of samples, counted them meaningfully and laid them on the boards.
'Well,' said the gem dealer, 'I don't know whether to be amused or insulted. I am Garthkint, the gem dealer —not a retailer of beads.
However, I have no hard feelings. A drink for your frowning friend, Herald? I know you gentry don't indulge.' The drink was already on the table, brought by one of the hulking guards.
Alen passed Garthkint's own mug of wine to the trader, explaining politely: 'In my master trader's native Cepheus it is considered honorable for the guest to sip the drink his host laid down and none other. A charming custom, is it not?'
'Charming, though unsanitary,' muttered the gem dealer— and he did not touch the drink he had ordered for blackbeard.
'I can't understand a word either of you is saying—too flowery. Was this little rat trying to drug me?' demanded the trader in Cephean.
'No,' said Alen. 'Just trying to get you drunk.' To Garthkint in Lyran, he explained, 'The good trader was saying that he wishes to leave at once.
I was agreeing with him.'
'Well,' said Garthkint, 'perhaps I can take a couple of your gauds. For some youngster who wishes a cheap ring.'
'He's getting to it,' Alen told the trader.
'High time,' grunted blackbeard.
'The trader asks me to inform you,' said Alen, switching back to Lyran,
'that he is unable to sell in lots smaller than five hundred gems.'
'A compact language, Cephean,' said Garthkint, narrowing his eyes.
'Is it not?' Alen blandly agreed.
The gem dealer's forefinger rolled an especially fine three-fire stone from the little pool of gems on the table. 'I suppose,' he said grudgingly, 'that this is what I must call the best of the lot. What, I am curious to know, is the price you would set for five hundred equal in quality and size to this poor thing?'
'This,' said Alen, 'is the good trader's first venture to your delightful planet. He wishes to be remembered and welcomed all of the many times he anticipates returning. Because of this he has set an absurdly low price, counting
