had slept in his insulation jacket for warmth, but here the heat of the sea and the warm breeze that came from it precluded any need for the jacket, so he used it for a pillow.

Sometime near midnight, the wind changed. The chill wind from the mountains swept downward, and, meeting with the warm, moisture-laden air from the sea, blanketed the coast with a chilling fog.

Leland Hale, untroubled by anything so prosaic as a conscience, and justifiably tired from his long journey on foot, didn't notice the dropping temperature until the fog had actually become a light drizzle. He awoke to find himself shivering and wet and stiff. He put on the insulation jacket immediately, but it took time for his body to warm up and generate enough heat inside the jacket to make him reasonably comfortable. There was absolutely nothing on that rocky coast that could be induced to burn, especially since the rain had begun, so Hale had to forego the primitive comfort of a fire.

Just before dawn, the wind changed direction again, and the fog slowly dissipated under the influence of the sea breeze and the heat of the rising sun. Hale stripped off his clammy clothing and put it on a rock to dry, but he already had the sniffles and sneezes.

Leland Hale was nothing if not determined; his record shows that. Once he had decided on a course of action, only the gravest of obstacles could block his path. Most of them could be surmounted, flanked, or, in case of necessity, smashed through by pure brute strength.

Once, on Viyellan, he set up a scheme for selling a piece of bogus artwork to a wealthy collector. He had spent months of loving care in constructing an almost indetectable phony, and his preliminary contacts with the collector had been beautifully successful.

Hale insisted on cash for the artwork, which was to be delivered on a certain date. But the day before the appointed time, Hale's accomplice, thinking he could make a better profit elsewhere, absconded with the imitation.

Hale, knowing that the collector had drawn half a million stellors in cash, burgled his home that night. Then he had the temerity to show up the next morning to complete the agreement. When the collector discovered that there was no cash on hand to pay for the "artwork," Hale indignantly refused to sell, on the grounds that the collector had reneged, was unethical, and not to be trusted in any way.

A week or so later, Hale finally traced his errant 

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