"I'm very tired," he said heavily. "If you could show me where the room is, I should like to rest."

Marn uttered an apologetic exclamation. "Oh, I'm sorry! Of course you're tired. Come with me, Mr. Carlin."

She led upstairs. There was no grav-lift, just old-fashioned steps going up a dark hall. And the bedroom on the upper floor to which she took him was as bad as he had expected.

It was clean, of course, spotlessly so. But it was more like a museum exhibit than a sleeping chamber, to Carlin. There were no aerators, just open windows with crude screens across them. No somnigrav pad, just a high, old-style bed. There wasn't even a video.

Yet the girl made no apologies for it, seemed not to think any necessary.

"We'll bring your bags up after dinner," she said. "It will be soon."

CHAPTER III

Old Planet

When Marn had gone, Carlin lay down wearily on the lumpy, sagging bed. He closed his eyes. The reaction to the long, slow voyage had set in. No doubt about it, he was star-sick all right. Time was when no voyage could have made him feel like this.

But it wasn't the voyage so much as this world to which he had been condemned. How was he going to live here for months, for a whole year maybe?

The sound of an angry voice came up dimly through the twilight, from the lower floor of the house. He recognized Harb Land's angry tones.

"—if Control Operations finds out what we're doing!"

There was a murmur of lower voices, and then the argument seemed to stop. Carlin remembered what he had overheard the red-faced Loesser saying at the spaceport.

What were these Earthmen doing that they were so secretive about? It must be something against the laws by which Control Council governed the galaxy, or they would not fear discovery by Control Operations.

When Carlin went down to dinner, he expected open hostility from the gangling older brother. But Harb Land muttered a curt greeting, his half-civil manner 

 Prev. P 12/54 next