The transmitted order had been simple enough, prefaced by the ship's call sign and Kin's own code. It had come over the normal ground-to-orbit channels. It could have come from a dozen transmitters while work on Kingdom was being completed.

It had ended: 'A flat world. You, Kin Arad, are a very curious person. Cheat me and you will forever wonder what sights you missed.'

Kin's hand dropped -- and didn't touch the message switch.

You couldn't build a flat world.

But then, you couldn't come back if you were a Terminus pilot.

And you couldn't duplicate Company scrip.

'Ship?'

'Lady?'

'Continue to Kung. Oh, and open a channel to the screen in my study.'

'Done, lady.'

It was wrong. It was probably foolish. It would certainly get her fired.

Be there or forever wonder.

She filled the hours by relearning Primary Ekung and reading the supplements to the planetary digest. It appeared the kung now had a Line, but no-one had got around to banning ship landings on the world itself. Nothing much was banned on Kung, even murder. She checked and found it was now the only world in local space that actually allowed ships to land under power. Was that relevant?

Kung was hungry for alien currency. There wasn't a great deal Kung could produce that humans could use, except a whole variety of pneumonia-type illnesses, but there was a lot Kung wanted. It was trying to start a tourist industry...

Kin had been there. She recalled rain. The kung had forty-two different words for rain, but that just wasn't enough words to encompass the great symphony of water that fell for fifty-five minutes in every hour. There were no mountains. The light gravity had allowed plenty to rise, but it allowed lots of ocean spray into the wind to wash them down. The nubs that remained had a dispirited, back-turned look.

Of course, sometimes they became islands. Kin remembered about the tides.

An over-large moon and a cool, close sun meant nightmare tides. Vegetation was either fungal, able to spring up and fruit hurriedly at low tides, or it was resigned to a semi-submerged life.

And tourists came. Even though they had to wear float-jackets most of the time in case of flash tides, the tourists came. They were fishermen and mist enthusiasts, micophiles and wanderjahr biology students. As for the kung themselves...

She switched off and sat back.

'You should have told the Company,' she said silently. 'There's still time.'

She answered: 'You know what will happen. He might be mad, but he's no fool. He'll be prepared for any trap. Besides, Kung isn't a human world. Company writ runs thin down there. He'll duck and weave and we'll lose him.'

She said: 'You have a duty. You can't let a menace like him run around loose just to satisfy your curiosity.'

She answered: 'Why not?'

How rich is Kin Arad, daughter of the genuine Earth and author of Continuous Creation (q.v.)? The Company paid its servants in Days, but since they could earn far more than a Day in a day, they often sold surplus time for more traditional currencies. Temporally, then, her account showed that she had another 368 years, 5 weeks and 2 days in hand, plus 180,000 credits -- and a credit is worth a credit these days.

In any case, credits were backed by Days. The galaxy had rare elements in plenty. The transmuter at the heart of every strata machine or dumbwaiter could make anything. What else but longevity itself could back a currency? Kin could buy life. Could Solomon have done it? Could Cloritty have done it? Could Hughes have done it?

She was rich.

An alarm bleeped. Kingdom's sun bulked in the forward screen as a fire-rim black disc, the sensors having long ago been appalled by its brightness.

Kin switched off the ship's voice, because she hated the countdown to an Elsewhere jump. It was like waiting for death. If the computer was right, and it was never wrong, the ship would jump just as soon as it was at an acceptable orbital speed with regard to--

(a few seconds of vertigo, a brief agony of despair. Soullag, it was called on little evidence. Certainly something in the human mind refused to travel faster than -- it had been experimentally verified -- 0.7 light-years per second, so that after even a short jump through Elsewhere-space there was a hollow black time before the rushing mental upwellllll--)

--the destination world. Kin caught her balance, and looked out. The Kung sun was a cool red dwarf. Statistics said it was small. They lied. From 4 million miles away it was a giant. Kung practically rolled through its upper atmosphere -- and there it was, a perceptible black disc. Kin smiled. Kung, living under permanent cloud cover, were mad enough to begin with. What sort of religion would they have developed if they had been able to see the sky?

Three hours later she left the ship a few miles from Kung Line Top.

The satellite was decorated in Kung style -- grey and brown-purple predominated, with startling touches of heart-attack red. There was no immigration control. Kung welcomed smugglers. Smugglers were rich.

Her suit's jets wafted her gently into one of the airlocks, which cycled automatically.

Line Top! The spaceward end of the monomolecular wire that linked every civilized world with the greater galaxy! The gateway to the stars, where robots jostled with ten-eyed aliens, spies moved circumspectly, golden-bearded traders of strange and subtle wares sold curious powders that made men go mad and talk to God, and crippled boys busked strange electronic instruments that plucked emotions. Line Top! A hefty kick and you had escape velocity. Line Top! Threshold of the universe!

Anyway, that was the idea. But this was reality, and Kung was in a poor time for the tourist trade. The kung that loped through the tethered satellite's corridors were admittedly colourful, but familiar. There was an unipodal Ehft operating a sweeping machine in one corridor. If it was a spy for the Galactic Federation, it was a master of disguise.

The big board on the main concourse said there was an hour to wait until the next downward shuttle. Kin found a bar with a window overlooking the shuttle hall. The bar was called The Broken Drum.

'Why?' she asked the kung behind the bar. Saucereyed he fixed her with the bland stare of barmen everywhere.

'You can't beat it,' he said. 'Your wish?'

'I thought kung had no sense of humour.'

'That is so.' The bar-kung looked at her carefully. 'From Earth?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Kin.

'Which one? I've got a brother-uncle on Real Ea--'

'The genuine one,' said Kin sharply. He looked at her thoughtfully again, then reached under the counter and pulled out a filmy cassette that Kin recognized with a sinking heart.

'I thought the face was familiar,' said the bar-kung triumphantly. 'Soon as you walked in, I thought, very familiar face -- of course it's a bad holo on the filmy, but still... Ha. Do you think you could do a voice print on it, Miss Arad?' He grinned horribly.

She smiled valiantly, and took the tape translation of Continuous Creation from his damp four-fingered hands.

'Of course, it's not for you, I understand, it's for your nephew Sam,' she murmured cruelly. The kung looked startled.

'I have no nephew Sam,' he said, 'although I had intended it for my son-brother Brtkltc. How did you know?'

'Magic,' sighed Kin.

She took her drink to the big window, and idly watched tugs shunting cargo shuttles across the marshalling wires while behind her she half-heard the bar-kung talking excitedly to someone on the intercom. Then a someone was standing by her chair. She looked round, and then up. A kung was standing beside her.

Look at the kung. Seven feet tall, and then topped off with a red coxcomb that was made of something like hair. Two saucer eyes filled the face, and they were now two-thirds closed against the lights that had been turned up by the bar-kung out of deference to Kin. The body was skeletal, with body-builder's muscles strung like beads on a wire and a bulge between the shoulder-blades for the third lung. The shipsuit it wore was a masterpiece of tailoring. It had to be. The kung had four arms.