"We eat and sleep, make love and die," she said, "very much like you. The sky is very beautiful at night. The stars are close and burning, not cold and far-away like yours." She paused.

"Where did your father learn to fly?"

"From his father. It's a family tradition."

"And the plane had belonged to your family since the Ei destroyed the atomic cultures of your Earth-year 1979?"

"Since the _Vurna_ destroyed it--yes."

She did not argue the point. "How old was the plane then?"

Sneaky little question, quietly asked. What was she driving at? Price began to feel that he was in a trap, but he could not quite see the shape of it. Then, before he was forced into an answer that might very well be the wrong one, he saw something that gave him the perfect excuse to ignore it.

The thing he saw was a starship.

He had never seen a starship before in his life, but he knew this could not be anything else. He judged that they must be back across the river now and well within the Forbidden Belt. The ship stood like a tower of white metal, enormous, slim, delicate, a thing of slumbering power that caught the throat with awe and wonder. There were no trees anywhere near it, and the earth underneath was fused and hardened to a substance more durable than iron or concrete.Linna said, "That is one reason we do not want men in the Belt. There is danger of being caught in a take-off or a landing."

The aerodyne flashed past, and Price looked back as long as he could at the dwindling shape, splendid but curiously lonely in the middle of nowhere. "I would have thought you'd have a port, close in. By the Citadel, I mean."

Linna shook her head. "Dispersal is much safer. That is why the Belt is so wide. We have a number of ships."

The man beside the pilot spoke, and Linna touched Price's shoulder, pointing ahead. "In a minute you will see the Citadel."

What he saw first was that iron blinking in the low air that he had seen from the plane. It grew with fantastic speed, taking shape, acquiring height and substance. Price had been prepared for something tremendous. In spite of that, he was wide-eyed and astonished as any tribesman.

The Citadel rose from a level barren, 

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