The Five Gold Bands

'Paddy!'

The attendant looked up sharply and Paddy's knees wobbled. Fay's eyes grew large and moist. She blushed red. Taking Paddy's arm she pulled him out into the big echoing lobby.

'Paddy,' she whispered. 'How did you get away? I was waiting with my heart in my mouth, waiting for the shouting and banging-'

'Shh,' said Paddy. 'Not so loud, and I'll tell you a great joke. I was once in a battle and they lifted my scalp. The doctors sewed me up again with a big platinum plate across my sconce. I can laugh at those psychographs, because the metal shorts them all out and they never read the same on me.'

Fay bristled like a porcupine-fish.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

Paddy shrugged. 'I didn't want to worry you.'

'Worry-Hah! I'm only worried because now I'll have to live with you another couple of months.'

'Now, now, my dear,' said Paddy abstractedly. He took her arm. 'And here is where we get our breathers.'

X

Coming out of the terminal, they found themselves on a balcony hanging over Aevelye like an eagle's aerie. They stood in a bath of canary-yellow light and the sky over them had taken on an odd amber hue. Paddy and Fay crossed the balcony, stepped aboard an escalator which dropped them down, down, down to the white-columned city below.

They passed great residences perched on ledges, airy white houses set among the strangest vegetation of their experience. Stalks like stacks of tetrahedrons supported a foliage of crystalline spines or groups of olive- green slabs reticulated with slabs of red glass or flowers that were like an instantaneous photograph of an exploding opal-fragments held out from a center by invisible tendrils.

The buildings became of a more commercial character-shops displaying the richest wares of the universe, and presently Fay spied a sign reading, traveler's haven. They stepped off the escalator, walked along a trestle overhanging a thousand feet of clear space to a tall edifice of concrete waxy-green serpentine polished granite.

They entered, crossed to the desk. 'We'd like lodgings,' Paddy told the Shaul clerk.

The clerk flipped his hood casually, gestured to a small sign-Earther trade not solicited.

Paddy tightened his lips, narrowed his eyes. 'You skin-headed little runt,' he began. Fay clutched his arm. 'Come, Paddy.'

The clerk said, 'The Earther hotel is down the slope.' Outside Paddy snapped, 'Don't call me Paddy. I'm Joe Smith. Do you want them jumping on my neck?'

'I'm sorry,' said Fay.

The Earther hotel was a gray block in the lower part of the city between two. heaps of slag from a zinc refinery on the level above. The clerk was a wrinkled black-eyed Canope, crouching behind his desk as if he feared his guests.

'We want two rooms,' said Paddy.

'Two?' The clerk looked from one to the other.

'My wife snores,' explained Paddy. 'I want to get a good night's sleep somewhere along the trip.'

Fay snarled under her breath. The clerk shrugged. 'Just as you like.' He eyed Fay speculatively, handed them a pair of keys. 'The rooms are dark and turned away from the view but it's the best I can do for you at the moment. Rent's a day in advance, please.'

Paddy paid him. 'Now we'd like some information. We're journalists from Earth, you see, and we're to take some pictures and we find our special lamp has come apart. Where can we have one made to our order?'

The clerk turned, punched a button, spoke into a mesh. 'Is Mr. Dane there? Send him across, please. I've got some business for him.'

He turned back to his guests. This is an old electrician that's down on his luck and he'll do for you. Is that all?'

'Where and what is Corescens?' asked Fay.

'Corescens?' The clerk's mouth opened a little. He blinked uncomfortably. 'You'll find it hard seeing Coresscens-especially as you're Earthers. It's the dead Son's private residence out across the Fumighast Ventrole.'

Dane hobbled in, a one-eyed skinny old man with a crooked neck, a long bent nose. 'Yes, and what might ye be wantin'?'

Paddy said, 'We need a special ultra-violet light source for our camera. It must have four separate units with variable frequency-controls for each unit over the range six hundred to three thousand one hundred angstroms. Can you make it up?'

Dane scratched his pate. 'I'll see if I've got the proper valves. I think I can do it.' He cocked a bright glance at Fay. 'It'll cost you dear, though. Three hundred marks.'

Paddy drew back in indignation. 'Faith, now. I'll use my flashlight first. Three hundred marks for a few bits of wire and junk?'

There's my labor, lad, and my training. Long years now I've studied.'

Two hundred fifty marks was the figure finally reached, delivery to be made in two days.

Darkness filled the valley outside like pale ink in a vast basin and the slope above was hung with a thousand colored lights-red, green, blue, yellow, all soft and vague as if their purpose were less to illuminate than to decorate.

On the terrace outside the hotel Paddy said to Fay, 'Do you know, I can feel something of what the first Son loved in this planet Shaul. It's as violent and queer as a madman's whims but the color and now the softness of the night are wonderful. And out there across the valley there's another settlement and the lights glow across to us like fireflies.'

Fay said softly, 'Is it nicer than Skibbereen, Paddy?'

'Ah!' sighed Paddy. 'And now you've touched me, my dear. When I think of the turf-smoke that they still burn after all these ages and how it comes reeking in from the bog and the old pub around from where I was raised and the River Ilen-yes, I'll be glad to get home.'

'Then there's always the terrace at Meran,' suggested Fay, 'with the beer and the women.'

'Ah!' cried Paddy. 'The beer, it's like the nectar of paradise and the girls with their soft hands! If you catch the pearl in their navels with your teeth, then they must do your bidding for as long as you will-that's the custom of Maeve-and some of them wear pearls as big as plums.'

'If you'll excuse me,' said Fay coolly, 'I'm going to buy a map and find Corescens. I'll leave you to your reminiscences.'

'Here now,' cried Paddy. 'Faith, I was but teasing. And you started me out on it!' But she had disappeared.

Next morning they took possession of a rough-steering old sightseeing platform-the proprietor of the rental yard had been reluctant to trust Earthers with anything better-and loading the camera aboard they shoved off and out across the hazy valley.

Paddy said, 'And now where's Corescens that you studied on last night?'

'We've got to find Fumighast Ventrole,' said Fay. 'It's supposed to be twenty miles north, a dead crater.'

They rose out of the valley into the blaze of Almach's light and the complex face of Shaul spread out to all sides.

Fay pointed. 'See that smoke rising? That's the volcano Aureo and just beyond is Corescens.'

Fumighast Ventrole was another vast chasm in the planet, nearly circular in cross-section and so deep that its bottom could not be distinguished through the haze. The sides glistened and glittered, rays of light flashing and