The Five Gold Bands

the daring ones, the soldiers. I think of them as the devils that figured out the most horrible tortures. Then there's the Canopes, that hive together like bees. What of it? None of them have a little of everything like the Earthers.'

Fay said seriously, 'That's by our standards. We're taking ourselves as the base of comparison. By the standards of these other races we're at one extreme or another.'

Paddy grumbled, 'Better that old Sam Langtry had smothered in his cradle. Look at the mess and jumble, men of all varieties. It was so simple before.'

Fay tilted her head back, laughed. 'Don't be silly, Paddy. Human history has always been a series-a cycle of differentiation, then the mingling of the surviving stock back to uniformity. Bight now we're going through the cycle of differentiation.'

'And may the best man win,' said Paddy dourly.

'So far,' said Fay, 'we're not winning.'

Paddy shoved out his head, crooked his elbows. 'Well, they went and tied up the space-drive on us. That's like blindfolding a man before he gets in a free-for-all. Give us Earthers an even crack at it-we'd have 'em backed to the boards, crying and pleading for mercy. What a joke! It was an Earther that discovered the gadget and gave them their lives.'

'Accident,' said Fay, kicking at a pebble. 'Langtry was only trying to accelerate mesons in a tungsten cylinder.'

'That's the man who's responsible for all this trouble!' cried Paddy. 'Langtry! If I had the spalpeen here I'd give him a piece of my mind.'

'I would too,' said Fay. 'But mostly for giving the secret to his five sons instead of the Earth Parliament.'

'Well-the five sons, then. Greedy devils, they're the ones I'd rail at. What did they need, each with a planet to himself?'

Fay made a careless gesture. 'Love of power. The empire-building instinct. Or bad blood. Call it anything you like. They left Earth for the stars and settled along the Langtry line, each to a world, and set themselves up in the business of selling space-drives to the home-world. Their descendants get the secret, no one else. I suppose nobody would be more surprised then old Sam Langtry at the way things have turned out.'

'If I had him here, you know what I'd be doing with him?'

'Yes-you told me. You'd be giving him a piece of your mind.'

'Ah, you're mocking me now. But no, I'd send him back to guard our boat. And we'd beat his bones raw if divil an Eagle laid a finger on the polish.'

Fay looked up the ridge ahead. 'You'd better be saving your breath for the climbing.'

VI

The road bent up toward North Peak in a gradually steepening rise. Below and to their right spread the sea of dull gas, out as far as the eye could reach. Back along the shore the whirling fetishes of a thousand little villages flashed in the yellow light of Alpheratz. To the left, around the hook of the cape, was Sugksu, a city built on the same general plan as the villages. There was a central obelisk, surrounding circles of buildings.

Fay clutched Paddy's arm. 'Look! See there-maybe you're right after all…'

It was a spindly trestle of steel, crowned with a whirling fetish, on the very lips of the cliff.

'Those things are sacred to something or somebody. We'll have to look for a Sacred Sign.'

Standing around the edge of the cliff was a group of Eagles, males with scarlet or orange-dyed crests, females with greens and blues, all wearing the same black-brown sheath of fabric that covered their bony bodies from breast to knee, the same flat shoes.

'Tourists,' whispered Fay. 'We'll have to wait till they leave.'

'Naturally,' said Paddy.

For twenty minutes they waited, looking out over the vast spread of view, eyeing the Eagles sidelong.

A voice spoke at their elbow. An Eagle had stepped up beside them unnoticed. Paddy's Adam's apple twitched. The Eagle wore the official medallion of the Pherasic government.

'Tourists?' asked the Eagle.

'We're loving every minute of it,' said Fay enthusiastically. 'The view is marvelous! The city is beautiful…'

The Eagle nodded. 'It is indeed. This is one of our finest spectacles. Even the Revered Son of Langtry himself ascends from time to time to take the north airs.'

Fay glanced at Paddy significantly. Paddy raised one eyebrow. Evidently the death of the five Sons had not been announced to the universe at large. The Eagle was saying, 'And when you get down to Sugksu be sure to take the deep-sea tour and see the strange sights under the gas. Have you been on the planet long?'

'Not too long. But we've lost track of time,' she added coyly. 'You see, we're on our honeymoon. But we couldn't resist coming to see Alpheratz A.'

The Eagle nodded sagely. 'Wise-very wise. We have a world from which much may be learned.' And he stalked on.

Paddy spat. 'Damned meddlers. It's hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it's just curiosity.'

'Sh,' said Fay. 'They're leaving.'

Three minutes later the top of the peak was bare to the sweep of the wind.

'Now,' said Fay. 'A Sacred Sign-where is it? And how do we know it's sacred when we see it?'

Paddy vaulted up on the base of the trestle, glanced appraisingly up at the spinning vanes of orange and blue and red. 'That whirlymagig must be it.'

He scrambled up like a monkey until he came under the sweeping blades. He reached up, wrenched down the whole tangle of fiber, metal and feathers.

Fay yelled, 'You fool! They can see that from below!'

Paddy said, 'I had to if I wanted to see what was under.'

'Well-what is under?'

'Nothing,' Paddy said uncomfortably.

'Get down then for heavens sake. The riot squad will be here in five minutes.'

They walked briskly down the slope. Hardly had they gone a hundred yards when Fay put out her hand. 'Listen!'

A fierce anxious sound, still faint-Sweeee-eeeeee- eeeee. Far below a pair of motorcycles turned into the road, started up the grade. The sound grew louder, keening, whining. It stopped short. A moment later two Eagles, each with official medallion on his uniform, roared to a halt beside them.

One alighted. 'Who caused the destruction? He who is guilty will receive the severest of treatments.'

Fay said in a worried voice, 'We're not guilty. It was a party of Kotons and they went down the other way, I think.'

'There is no other way.'

'Ah, but they were wearing sky-skates,' said Paddy hopefully.

'They were drunk, the scoundrels,' said Fay.

The Eagle officials inspected them skeptically. Paddy sighed, cracked his knuckles behind his back. He speculated about the Pherasic jails. Were they more comfortable, he wondered, than the old brick fort at Akhabats?

The chief of the Eagles said to the subordinate, 'I'll continue to the top. You wait here. We will presume them guilty until I find otherwise.'

He twisted power on his motorcycle, continued up the hill.

'We're in the soup, Paddy,' said Fay in Earth-talk. 'I'll distract his attention. We want that motor-bike.'

Paddy stared at her, aghast. 'It's a long chance.'

'Of course it is,' she snapped. 'It's our only change. We've got to get away. If they