"What did you do last night, Yerby?" Amy asked in a cold, clear voice. "Was there anything interesting that you ought to share with the company?"

"Huh?" Yerby said. He looked surprised but not really furtive. "No, I wouldn't say that. Partied, you know. Did a bit of drinking."

He reached into the side pockets of his jacket. He brought out a room key in one hand and a lipstick-smeared bar napkin in the other.

"Nothing else, Yerby?" Amy said. "You're absolutely sure of that?"

The others in the room looked at her oddly. Mark wished he'd had an opportunity to tell Amy what Lucius had said about the chance of bribery succeeding.

"There was another thing," Yerby admitted. He peered, then fumbled into his breast pocket. "I found a poker game and didn't do so very bad."

This time his hand came out with a sheaf of currency. It looked impressive even before you realized that the top bill was a thousand Zenith dollars. He waved the cash to the room.

" Krishna saves!" Dagmar shouted, hopping up from the threatening chair. "How much is that?"

"Well, I don't really think of it as my money," Yerby said with a broad smirk. "Seeing's I won it here where we come for the case, you see. So I figured I'd use it to pay the boys, the Woodsrunners, for training. I don't worry about folks showing up when there's real trouble, but it's a pain in the ass to drop everything when you know it's just playacting. Sound good?"

"I think that's an extremely good idea, Mr. Bannock," Lucius said. He looked at Mark and winked.

Amy looked from Lucius to Yerby to Mark. She picked up the connection a good deal faster than Mark thought he'd have done if their roles were reversed.

Amy threw herself into her brother's arms and said, "Yerby, I can't tell you how good that sounds!"

Among a herd of elephants molded on the walls of the Safari House's lobby, Lucius turned to his son and said, "I could use an aide on Earth, you know. Would you care to come? I don't believe you've seen Paris yet, have you?"

"I wasn't much use to you here with the Protector," Mark said. He was buying time while he thought about his real answer.

"Don't you think so?" Lucius said. He sniffed. "I think you underestimate the disadvantage a lone man is at in a group of his opponents. In any case, your usefulness is a matter for me to determine. Your decision is whether or not to accept the offer."

"Dad," Mark said, forcing himself to meet his father's eyes. "I think I'd rather go back to Greenwood. I think…"

He wasn't sure if he was going to finish the thought. He wasn't even sure it was true. But it was what he believed.

"Dad," he said, "I think they need me there."

Lucius gave him a thin smile. It was very hard to tell what was behind the older man's eyes. "Yes, I was rather of that opinion too. Well, I'll take my leave now."

He nodded formally to Mark. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, "We both want the same thing for you, Mark: that you become a man worthy of your upbringing. So far, so good, I believe."

Lucius turned and walked through the doors onto the street. Slim, erect; every inch a gentleman.

What I really want, Mark realized, is to become a man my father can respect. And I guess that's what he just said.

19. The Home Front

The starship landing system for the Spiker was housed in a rough stone-and-concrete hut between the tavern compound and the magnetic mass. Beside the hut was an internally braced antenna thrusting up a hundred feet like a silvery needle. The four modules in the hut included a flat-plate display, keyboard, and output/input ports under latched flaps. The designers had built a gooseneck light into the terminal module, though the screen alone could have provided enough illumination to work by.

Mark suspected he was the first person to call up the unit's embedded menu and take a look at what the equipment could really do. Default mode was fully-automated operation: a ship in orbit engaged the landing system, which brought the vessel down without anybody on the ground being involved or even aware of what was happening. That had been good enough for Greenwood up till now.

The situation had changed with the Zenith trouble, Mark figured. This equipment was the same as that installed in major ports where a human operator oversaw traffic movements. It cost less to build the full capabilities into every set than it did to degrade individual units to minimum local needs.

Mark wasn't an electronics technician, but the landing system was meant to be installed by construction workers with only the most rudimentary knowledge of anything more complex than a backhoe. For three years Mark had used teaching software of a much higher degree of sophistication. By now he'd enabled the identification and tracking functions. His next job was to set parameters so that he could switch the whole system whenever he wanted to remote-control from the standard VHF radio in Yerby's compound.

Yerby's bulk darkened the doorway. "Morning, lad," the big man said. "Blaney said you were out here."

Mark laughed. "I wouldn't call three in the afternoon morning," he said. "Did you and Amy just get back?"

"Ah, the trip to Bottomless Pool," Yerby said with a slight frown. "No, to tell the truth, I spent the night here, lad. Met a few of my friends last night and, you know, partied some."

Mark felt his expression harden. "Amy's been looking forward all week to seeing the fish in Bottomless Pool," he said. "I'm sorry to hear that you missed the appointment again, Yerby."

Dr. Jesilind had visited the site with Yerby. According to him, the Bottomless Pool was the vent of an ancient volcano that siphoned salt water from the ocean at least a hundred miles away. The crater lake was rich in brilliantly colored plant life and fish with no resemblance to shallow-water forms.

Mark didn't wholly accept the doctor's claim of a unique ecology, but the pool certainly sounded interesting. He'd have asked to go with the Bannocks except for the overhanging threat of Zenith invasion. It was more important to finish his work with the landing system.

Besides, Mark had the vague thought that maybe after Yerby showed his sister where the pool was, Mark and Amy would go by themselves.

"Oh, well, that's all right," Yerby said. He sounded a trifle uncomfortable. "The doc knows where the place is, so he offered to take Amy there. I know, she don't get along with Doc the way you'd like, but she wanted to go so bad and me, well, I just wasn't up to coming home last night for another dustup with Desiree."

"I see," said Mark. Actually, Amy got along with Jesilind exactly the way Mark liked, which was just barely. But as Yerby said, she'd really wanted to see the pool.

"To tell the truth, though," Yerby said, "I'd sorta thought they'd be back before now. They're off in the blimp, but the guidance beacon isn't working real good and, you know, I can't seem to raise them on radio."

"They're not back at the compound?" Mark asked, feeling suddenly cold.

Yerby scratched his ribs with a look of great concentration. "Desiree says not," he admitted, glaring at his fingers. "Says they went off at first light and that's the last anybody's seen of them. Desiree said some other things too."

He raised his eyes to Mark. "Might be she was right about some of those things," Yerby said. "Not that I really think there's a problem, but if you ain't seen her like I hoped you had, maybe I'll take my flyer out to the Pool. Want to come along?"

A series of possibilities clicked through Mark's mind. His face remained frozen. Turning from Yerby, he called a movement chart up on the landing system's screen. The unit had to be able to track aircraft also in order to bring ships down safely in busy environments.