a sweeping gesture. "Many things here silly. Is true, in the Explored Galaxy, people do not care if you are blue, black, white? How long your nose is?"

"Yes, officially at least, there's no discrimination between humans and intelligent beings because of physical appearance."

Toal sighed. "Must be wonderful. Wish could leave Maggie."

"Why not?"

"Ordinance 3."

The wall around Joetropolis was made of genuine tree trunks treated with preservative and sharpened at the top. Heavy, pointed, irregularly spaced stakes, thrust at angles into the ground, fringed the wall. The effect of these crude fortifications was barbaric, even primitive. Bare electrical wires, strung on insulators fastened to the stakes, only accentuated the prehistoric picture.

"Follow the marked path," Toal said.

The zigzagging path was not more than a meter wide. I avoided touching the wires and reached open ground. A small gate in the wall swung inward, and a man wearing a white sack stalked out. He looked like an older brother of Ypsilanti. The two men behind him looked like younger brothers. Their knees and elbows were indecently exposed.

"Are arrested!" they chorused. One carried a hisser so ancient that it could have been the original model. The others had hand weapons.

"I apologize if I've broken your laws," I said, "but I don't know—"

"Ignorance of law is no excuse!" exclaimed the older man, who had "Dominant" on his brooch. He ordered, "Stop Betty Toal!" One of the guards chased the fleeing Toal along the wall.

"I'm Ube Kinlock," I said. "Galactic Government sent me in answer to—"

"Silence, criminal alien! Ordinance 55: Criminal aliens shall never speak, unless so ordered."

III: FOURDAY NIGHT

I sat up in the sweltering darkness of the cell. Mortar dropped on the bed from between the logs of the primitive wall. I grabbed a boot to defend myself against rodents but a voice whispered, "Kinlock. Is Betty Toal."

"High, Toal," I said. "What did they do to you?"

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