"They have no choice," said Boek. "All the imports and exports are handled by a municipal cooperative. Taxes are assessed there."

"Why isn't the safe moved, or guarded?"

"That's been tried - by our late mayor. The guards he posted were also found dead. Unclassifiable disease."

"In all probability," said Magnus Ridolph, "McInch is one of the city officials. They would be the first to be exposed to temptation."

"I agree with you," said Boek. "But which one?"

"How many are there?"

"Well - there's the postmaster, a Portmar multipede. There's the fire-chief, a man; the chief of police, a Sirius Fifth; the garbage collector, he's a - a - I can't think of the name. From 1012 Aurigae."

"A Golespod?"

"That's right. He's the only one of them in the city. Then there's the manager of the municipal warehouse, who is also the tax collector - one of the Tau Gemini ant-things - and last but not least, there's the Mayor. His name is Juju Jeejee - that's what it sounds like to me. He's a Yellowbird."

"I see..."

After a pause Boek said, "Well, what do you think?"

"The problem has points of interest," admitted Magnus Ridolph. "Naturally I want to look around the city."

Boek looked at his watch. "When would you like to go?" "I'll change my linen," said Magnus Ridolph, rising to his feet. "Then, if it's convenient to you, we'll look around at once."

"You understand, now," said Boek gruffly, "the minute you start asking questions about McInch, McInch knows it and he'll try to kill you."

"The Uni-Culture Mission is paying me a large fee to take that chance," declared Magnus Ridolph. "I am, so to speak, a latter-day gladiator. Logic is my sword, vigilance is my shield. And also" - he touched his short well-tended beard - "I will wear air-filters up my nostrils, and will spray myself with antiseptic. To complete my precautions, I'll carry a small germicidal radiator."

"Gladiator, eh?" snorted Boek. "You're more like a turtle. Well, how long before you'll be ready?"

"If you'll show me my quarters," said Magnus Ridolph, "I'll be with you in half an hour."

In gloomy triumph Boek said, "There's all that's left of the Ordinationalists."

Magnus Ridolph looked at the cubical stone building. Small dunes of gray dust lay piled against the walls; the door gaped into blankness.

"At that, it's the solidest building in Sclerotto," said Boek.

"A wonder McInch hasn't moved in," observed Magnus Ridolph.

"It's now the municipal dump. The garbage collector has his offices behind. I'll show you, if you like. It's one of the sights. Er - by the way, are you incognito?"

"No," said Magnus Ridolph. "I think not. I see no special need for subterfuge."

"Just as you like," said Boek, jumping out of the car. He watched with pursed lips as Magnus Ridolph soberly donned a gleaming sun-helmet, adjusted his nasal air-filters and dark glasses.

They plowed through fine gray dust, which, disturbed by their steps, rose into the dual sunlight in whorls of red, blue and a hundred intermediate shades.

Magnus Ridolph suddenly tilted his head. Boek grinned. "Quite a smell, isn't it? Almost call it a stink, wouldn't you?"

"I would indeed," assented Magnus Ridolph. "What in the name of Pluto are we approaching?"

"It's the garbage collector, the Golespod. Actually, he doesn't collect the garbage - the citizens bring it here and throw it on him. He absorbs it."

They circled the ancient Ordinationalist church, and Magnus Ridolph now saw that the back wall had been battered open, permitting the occupant light and air, but shading him from the two suns. This, the Golespod, was a wide rubbery creature, somewhat like a giant ray, though blockier, thicker in cross-section. It had a number of pale short legs on its underside, a blank milk-blue eye on its front, a row of pliant tendrils dangling under the eye. It crouched half-submerged in semi-solid rottenness - scraps of food, fish entrails, organic refuse of every sort.

"He gets paid for it," said Boek. "The pay is all velvet, as his board and room are thrown in with the job."

A rhythmic shuffling sound came to their ears. Around the corner of the old stone church came a snakelike creature suspended on thirty skinny jointed legs.

"That's one of the mail carriers," said Boek. "They're all multipedes - and pretty good at it, too."

The creature was long, wiry, and his body shone a burnished copper-red. He had a flat caterpillar face, four black shiny eyes, a small horny beak. A tray hung under his body containing letters and small parcels. One of these latter he seized with a foot, whistled shrilly. The Golespod grunted, flung back its front, tossing the trailing tentacles away from a black maw underneath.

The multipede tossed the little parcel into the mouth, and with a bright blank stare at Boek and Magnus Ridolph, turned in a supple arc and trundled around the building. The Golespod grunted, honked, burrowed deeper into the filth, where it lay staring at Boek and Magnus Ridolph - these two returning the scrutiny with much the same detached, faintly contemptuous curiosity.

"Does he understand human speech?" inquired Magnus Ridolph.

Boek nodded. "But don't go too near him. He's an irascible brute."

Magnus Ridolph took a cautious step or two forward, looked into the milky blue eye.

"I'm trying to identify a criminal named McInch. Can you help me?"

The black body moved in sudden agitation, and a furious honking came from the pale under-body. The eye distended, swelled. Boek cocked an ear.

"It's saying, 'Go away, go away.'"

Magnus Ridolph said, "You are unable to help me, then?"

The creature redoubled its angry demonstrations, suddenly lurched back, flung up its head, spewed a gout of vile-smelling fluid. Magnus Ridolph jumped nimbly back, but a few drops struck his tunic, inundated him with a choking fetor.

Boek watched with an undisguised smile as Magnus Ridolph scrubbed at the spot with his handkerchief. "It'll wear off after a while."

"Umph," said Magnus Ridolph.

They returned through the dust to the car.

"I'll take you to the Export Warehouse," said Boek. "That's about the center of town, and we can go on foot from there. You can see more on foot."

To either side of the street, now, the shacks and small shops, built of slate and split dried seaweed stalks, pressed ever closer, and life clotted more thickly about them. Human children, grimed and ragged, played in the street with near-featureless Capella-anthropoids, young, immature Carnegie Twelve Armadillos, Martian frog-children.

Hundreds of small Portman multipedes darted underfoot like lizards; most of them would be killed by their parents for reasons never quite understood by men. Yellowbirds - ostrich-like bipeds with soft yellow scales - strode quietly through the crowd, heads raised high, eyes rolled up. Like a parade of monsters in a dipsomaniac's delirium passed the population of Sclerotto City.

Stalls at either side of the street displayed simple goods - baskets, pans, a thousand ustensiles whose use only the seller and the buyer knew. Other shops sold what loosely might be termed food - fruits and canned goods for men, hard brown capsules for the Yellowbirds, squirming red worm-things for the Aldebaranese. And Magnus Ridolph noticed here and there little knots of tourists, for the most part natives of Earth, peering, talking, laughing, pointing.

Boek pulled his car up to a long corrugated-metal shed, and again they stepped out into the dust.

The warehouse was full of a hushed murmur. Scores of tourists walked about, buying trinkets - carved rock, elaborately patterned fabrics, nacreous jewels that were secreted in the bellies of the Kmaush, perfumes pressed from seaweed, statuettes, tiny aquaria in sealed globes, with a microscopic lens through which could be seen weirdly beautiful seascapes peopled with infusoria, tiny sponges, corals, darting squids, infinitesimal fish. Behind loomed bales of the planet's staple exports: seaweed resin, split dried seaweed for surfacing veneer, sacks of rare metallic salts.