THE GENTLEMAN IS AN EPWA

Whatever you might say about Grayson, he was a good colonial official. He was forty, which is a bit old for an Earthman to hold down an in-country post on Venus, but he had been in the Service eighteen years and his record as controllers was unimpeachable.

In those eighteen years he had banged about quite a bit, yet one would never guess it to hear him talk. Personal reminiscences were rare with him; he much preferred a game of chess or simply his pipe and a chair on the veranda, the last an architectural addition he had insisted on before taking over the Residency here at Blue Mold.

It had made the post odd looking, to say the least. There was the white walled dome, fashioned of steel-bound concrete, set down in the midst of that swamp wilderness like a half-submerged baseball. There were the latticed antenna towers for the radio that somehow never worked. And clapped on to one side of the dome, incongruous and unsightly, was that veranda of Venusian bamboo and nipa thatch.

Grayson was sitting there, enjoying the comparative cool of the evening after an unusually humid day, when his ear caught the rhythmic purr of an electric launch somewhere beyond the screening wall of lathea trees. “That will be Parkhurst,” he said to himself, rising. “It’s about time.”

For five weeks he had been alone, and more than anything he wanted company. It was just five weeks ago to the day that young Oberlin, his Assistant, had been taken sick with fever. Grayson had packed him off in the post gig while he was still able to get about.

“Tell Parkhurst to send me another as good as you,” he had said, not unkindly. “You deserve a better place than this anyway.”

Grayson opened the screen door and made his way down the catwalk to the jetty. The last glimmers of daylight were just passing. In the gloom, silhouetted against the lighter glow of open water, he saw the launch turn inshore and head in for a landing.

A moment later he caught a line and secured it to the bollards as a tall, gangling man leaped onto the jetty.

“Hullo, Grayson,” the man said. “How’s every little thing?” Grayson shook hands warmly but cast a surprised eye down into the launch. “Everything’s fine, sir,” he said, “but where’s my new Assistant?”

Parkhurst smiled. “We’ll discuss that later. Right now I could do with a drink and a chance to stretch my legs. I would have taken a ’copter, but you know how those things act up over this infernal bog…”

In puzzled silence, Grayson led the way back to the veranda, switched on a lamp and an insect-repellent tube and got out glasses and a bottle of Earthside whiskey. Parkhurst lingered over his drink luxuriously. He was a big man, almost completely bald save for a fringe of reddish hair just above the ears, and there was an air of efficiency about him in spite of his bulk.

“It was a good idea, sending Oberlin back when you did,” he said. “The medics at the base found he had incipient mold fever. That can be pretty nasty, but fortunately they caught it before it got a start. I read your report too. You’re doing a good job here, Grayson. I don’t mind telling you that this post is better managed than any in Venus South.”

He went on, discussing the weather, giving the idle gossip of the base which under ordinary circumstances would have held Grayson in rapt attention. Tonight, however, the controlleur writhed under the delay. At length he could stand it no longer.

“In my report, sir, I asked for another Assistant. I don’t mind the swamp, though it can be pretty bad at times, but it’s no place for a man alone. The psychos said that when they laid out this place, and…”

Parkhurst smiled like a man withholding something until the last possible moment.

“Oh, I brought your Assistant all right.”

“You did?” said Grayson, looking bewildered. “Then where…?”

“He’s in the launch,” chuckled Parkhurst. “Under the hatch.”

“Under the hatch…!”

“Perhaps I’d better explain,” said Parkhurst. “Your Assistant—his name is Rafael, by the way—comes directly from the Ensenada Production Works at Madrid, on Earth. He represents the latest electronic development and scientific research of the present day. He…”

“Just a minute, sir.” A horribly chilling thought had suddenly struck Grayson. “Are you telling me that you’ve brought a robot?”

Parkhurst got a cheroot out of his pocket and lit it slowly. “Not exactly,” he said. “Wait, I’ll go down to the launch and get him.”

Grayson’s fists clenched as his superior went out the screen door and disappeared into the blackness. Parkhurst was gone only a moment. When he reappeared, a second figure was at his heels. As they entered the ellipse of light, Grayson stared, then felt his misgivings pass.

The newcomer was tall and erect, a man who appeared to be about thirty-five, with strong aquiline features, clad in a suit of whites, plastic insect boots and a mold-protector helmet.

“This is Rafael, your new Assistant,” Parkhurst said. “He’s an Epwa.”

Grayson grinned. “Glad to know you,” he said cordially. Then: “Pardon my ignorance, but what the devil’s an Epwa?”

The shock was quick in coming. The hand he stretched out dosed over fingers that gave like flesh but were cold as metal to the touch. A voice said tonelessly:

“How do you do. Yes, I am an Epwa. The word is derived from the name, Ensenada Production Works Assembly, where I was created. I hope our relationship will be a mutually favorable one.”

So they had sent him a mechanical contrivance in place of an Assistant! Grayson could feel the indignation rise like a hot flush within him. And after eighteen years! That’s what came of giving the best part of one’s life to this damned colonial service. Probably thought he was getting old, and this was a polite way of telling him he’d better look to his retirement. Grayson remembered with a pang the days of his youth on Earth. He had been something then. He had graduated from Western Hemisphere College, but he had pushed his way through school by his own bootstraps. His father had been nothing more than Third Engineer on a space freighter. Grayson gloried in the fact that he had been accepted by the new post-atomic aristocracy on the basis of intelligence alone. Out here on Venus South he had managed to preserve his mental superiority through his dealings with the Venusians, who were, according to the Mokart anthropological scale, a decidedly inferior race.

He looked again at Rafael, and was astonished at the lifelike qualities of the new Assistant. Save for a frozen immobility of countenance—the eyes did not wink and there was no movement of the features except when he spoke—the impression that he was facing a human was overpowering.

Parkhurst smiled as he witnessed Grayson’s astonishment. “You’re behind the times, old man. Wonders have been done in electronics during the last decade. Rafael here can do everything a man can do, and is a damned sight more efficient. He requires no food or sleep. He will obey commands as far as his powers of visibility will allow. Moreover, he records all those commands on an internal chart for future reference. He can talk and answer questions, though naturally his abilities in that field are somewhat limited. But he can hold up his end of the conversation—just so he isn’t required to do so too often. A background of personal memoirs has been recorded on his brain. His outer covering, which, as you see, has been tinted to resemble flesh, is formed of the new transluk plastic which permits his entire workings to become visible when an inner light is switched on. He’s as good as, and probably better than, any assistant you could possibly get.”

Grayson sank back in his chair with a look of awe. “Are there a lot of these…these Epwas…back on Earth?”

“No.” Parkhurst shook his head slowly. “Not yet, at any rate. Public reaction has been somewhat antagonistic to them, so far. That’s why we’re trying them out here in the colonies first.”

* * * *

Two hours later Parkhurst shook hands, reentered the launch and disappeared into the swamp darkness. As he paced back down the catwalk, Grayson’s first emotion was one of embarrassment. How to treat Rafael? Like any other mechanical contrivance with which the post was equipped—the automatic ventilators and air filters, the storm-warning gadgets, the radar screen which kept him appraised of the movements and activities of the neighboring Venusian tribes? Or should be establish a quasi-human relationship, as one would with an uneducated native or a child?

Upon reaching the veranda, Grayson said self-consciously, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your quarters.”

Rafael nodded and rose jerkily from the chair. Passing through the central quarters of the dome, lit now by a soft glow of hidden lights, Grayson noted with some irritation that the Assistant was so light on his feet no sound of his steps could be heard. He opened the door of the spare bedroom, and Rafael stepped inside.

“I get up at seven,” the Earthman said. “You will go down to the spring and bring back a bucket of fresh water some time before that. The water system here is temporarily out of order, and I haven’t got around to repairing it yet.”

Rafael said, “I understand. Where is the spring?”

The question was flat and toneless, but distinct. Then Grayson remembered: the Assistant could obey commands only as far as his visibility went. He’d have to give detailed directions.

“The spring is approximately fifty yards from the dome,” he explained. “You go down the catwalk as far as the jetty, then turn right on the path there.” He added, “Be careful not to stray off the path. Quicksand, you know.”

Rafael said, “I understand. Spring, fifty yards, path, quicksand.”

Grayson went across to his room, undressed, and lay down on his bed. He tried to sleep but lay there wide awake, instead, while troubled thoughts milled in his brain. What the devil was wrong with them at the base? It was companionship he needed here at Blue Mold. One man could easily take care of the duties, but one man would go quite mad if left in this swamp alone for any length of time. It wasn’t so much the silence or the incredible isolation, though they were bad enough. It was the subtle, insidious alien quality of the marsh, that worked slowly into a man’s mind and took hold there like a living thing. Wherever one went there was mold, blue parasitical mold that came drifting down from the thick sky like balls of indigo cotton. Where it landed, it adhered with leech-like tenacity, developing rootlets, growing, spreading with loathsome speed. The roiling water was blue, the cat-tail trees were blue, the marsh grass, the Venusian bamboo, the very air had a bluish cast to it. And the damnable color was endemic; already Grayson had detected bluish spots at his fingertips and along the under side of his arms.

The Venusian tribes who looked to him as their magistrate seemed to thrive in these surroundings. But they were a low-caliber lot, semi-nomadic, too shiftless to build decent, permanent habitations.

About midnight Grayson finally fell into a restless sleep. He dreamed unpleasant dreams of pulling a launch through the shore ooze of the great swamp—like a boatman on the Volga—while four Epwas, all precisely alike, cracked whips and urged him on. When he finally awoke, it was with the leaden sensation that no time at all had elapsed. He felt better, however, after he had showered and dressed, and when he went into central-quarters an agreeable sight met his gaze. On the table was a flagon of cold water. Rafael stood in the center of the room, motionless, apparently awaiting commands.

Breakfast over, Grayson crossed to his desk at the far side of the room to lay out his work for the day. This was the part of the morning he enjoyed best. Here he could sit amid the pleasant disorderliness of piled papers, pencils, pipes and his books on Venusian lepidopters and briefly plan his work for the next seven or eight hours. The fact that he never followed through on these plans troubled him not at all. Grayson wasn’t a tidy man; he did things in a hit-or-miss fashion, although in the end he usually managed to accomplish what he had set out to do.

Two feet away from his desk, he stopped, staring. Gone were the familiar piles of paper. In their place was a naked expanse of desk, surface, the dark won-won wood polished to the nines. His pipes were neatly arrayed in the rack on the wall; his books, three of which he had left open to passages he wanted to re-read, were closed and stacked, bindings out, on the desk top.

Grayson’s face slowly drained of color. Like all untidy men, he hated to have his personal possessions disturbed. He swung around and called Rafael.

The Assistant approached quietly.

“After this,” Grayson said, controlling his anger with an effort, “you will touch nothing on this desk at all. Do you understand? Nothing at all. As far as you’re concerned, this desk is taboo…verboten.”

The Assistant said, “Desk, not touch…I understand.”

* * * *

It was a full week before Grayson adjusted himself to the presence of his new companion; but never, he told himself, could he quite accept the fact that Rafael was not human. Several times he had ordered the Assistant to stand still while he switched on the light that lit up his interior. Then he stood there and marveled at the world of wires, electronic tubes, and resistors which made up the Assistant’s system.

But, as Parkhurst had said, Rafael was efficient. He performed every duty expertly and completely. His memory was prodigious; he needed to be told only once to do a task. It was this very efficiency that began to eat away, like drops of falling water, at Grayson’s usual aplomb.

Unconsciously he fell to watching the Assistant in his various performances for something to criticize. He found nothing. Moreover, Rafael was at all times a gentleman, which Grayson was not. It infuriated the Earthman to receive a soft-spoken, genteel reply in answer to one of his own that was barbed with profanity.

“Rafael, get me my meerschaum pipe.”

“Meerschaum…I do not understand the word, sir.”

“Idiot! It’s the white one on the desk.”

“Des…desk. I am not to touch anything on the desk, sir.”

“Damn you, you’re to do as I say. Get the pipe.”

But Grayson remembered one detail of Rafael’s construction very well, and he took pains to act accordingly. The Assistant’s internal chart recorded all the commands given him. It would not do to send him about on false missions.

It had been the last day of January when Rafael had been brought to the post. Now it was getting on to the middle of February, and on the fifteenth, certain as clockwork, the rainy-mold season would begin. That meant for exactly thirty days they would be confined to the dome. Weather changes went off with machine precision here in Venus South, and during the rm days an Earthman’s life wasn’t worth a single credit if he exposed himself to the elements in the great swamp.

On the fourteenth he said to Rafael, “You will leave at once for Village Xanon, see the headman and find out why the regular tax payment has not been made. Village Xanon is approximately ten kilometers from here. It lies inland due East, and there is a trail of plastic discs mounted on trees at regular intervals. Be back here by tomorrow noon at the latest.”

A slight whirring issued from the Assistant’s head as he mulled over this information.

After Rafael had gone, Grayson settled back in the chair and lit his pipe, feeling extremely satisfied. He had given the Assistant a metal umbrella to fend off the falling mold spores, but during the rm days that was scant protection. And rm started tomorrow. Although he would not admit it to himself, Grayson hoped Rafael would not return. Then when Parkhurst came for his regular inspection trip in March, he could say, “Send me down another Assistant, will you. And make it an Earthman this time. That last contraption of yours wasn’t very…durable.”

But Rafael did come back. He came back with his new insect boots stained and plastered with mud, with his suit of whites ripped and torn and his face mottled from contact with mold spores He brought not only the overdue tax payment but also a small bag woven of blue ipso grass.

“What’s this, Rafael?”

“A personal gift, sir.”

“A gift?”

“From the Venusians, sir. They…like me.”

* * * *

It was the evenings that Grayson always disliked. Where the average Earthman finds this a time to relax and review the events of the day, Grayson always saw himself a day older, another period of frustration ticked off in a life that had been one large disappointment. He was tired then, too, even though the day’s activities had been light, but weariness was a feeling unknown to Rafael.

Grayson began to hate the sight of the Assistant, always so fresh, so composed, always so ready to respond to his every command. The fact that Rafael needed no sleep to revitalize his energy led the Earthman to wonder what occupied the Assistant’s thoughts during the lonely hours of the night. That was absurd, of course. An Epwa couldn’t think in the abstract sense. Yet, as if to refute this, Rafael was always ready to launch into a series of personal reminiscences whenever the silence hung heavy in the dome. Grayson knew those tales and anecdotes were part of a fabricated past skillfully woven into Rafael’s brain by his manufacturers, but the effect of reality was always there.

“Did I ever tell you of the time I was lost on Mars’ red desert?”

“Yes, you did, Rafael. Keep your machine-made recollections to yourself.”

As the days of his enforced stay in the dome dragged past, a kind of tension began to build up in the Earthman. Grayson sought to fight this tension by making himself physically slack. He neglected the first rule of a colonial on any of the backward planets, that of dressing for dinner and shaving every day. Yet although a disregard for these habits helped to alleviate the nervous strain, he was horribly aware that the Assistant needed no such indulgences.

And then, as suddenly as they had begun, the rain and the mold ended. But, with a richer luxuriance than before, caused by the excessive moisture, the blue vegetation now took on a purplish hue that spread itself quickly across the great marsh. Grayson felt the tension within him increase rather than lessen.

To make matters worse, the Indigo birds—Ornithopterazure—changed their migration habits and came down from Venus North, nesting in vast numbers about the post. A repulsive scavenger species with razor-sharp beaks and long, saurian tails, they had an unpleasant trick of directing their attack against the eyes. Grayson found it necessary to carry’ a weapon with him whenever he left the dome. The birds stayed two weeks. They gave way to the Lyzata, equally horrible, who were fur-bearing serpents of python size and who, though harmless, crawled over everything like enormous caterpillars.

* * * *

In the early part of April Grayson realized quite suddenly that native conditions in his sector of Venus South had gone from bad to worse. Neither Village Xanon nor any of the other pahongs had followed up on their regular monthly tax payments. Furthermore, when he occasionally met a Venusian on the jungle trail, the native stared at him impudently and made no move to bow, a recognition which the controlleur always insisted upon. Grayson had only contempt for these swamp creatures, and his dealings with them, as overlord, were touched with cruelty and arrogance. Two years ago he had found it necessary to whip a Venusian arcolat; within an inch of his life, because the scoundrel had failed to wash his filthy hands before preparing food that had been presented to the Earthman.

When Grayson went to Village Xanon to see about the tax, he was met with open resentment. The grizzled old chief replied he could not pay for five days, and no amount of threatening could alter his stand.

“Great sir, why do you not send the-man-who-cannot-smile to our pahong? He is kind and considerate and speaks to us softly.”

Grayson stiffened. “The-man-who-cannot-smile! You mean Rafael?”

“That is his name. Yes.”

The Earthman controlled his rage with difficulty.

“Get this through your head,” he replied. “It makes no difference who comes to collect—you’ll pay! Understand?”

Then he did something that violated one of the most stringent rules of a Venus colonial. He struck the chief across the mouth with the flat of his hand. All too well, Grayson knew that to a Venusian the body of a chief is considered inviolable.

Returning by the back trail to the dome, the controlleur told himself it was time indeed to get rid of his Epwa Assistant. Not only was Rafael a calculating, errorless machine who could offer no normal companionship, he was disturbing the morale of the entire native organization. Let him stay on here with his equality treatment of the Venusians and the situation would shortly become unbearable.

Grayson mulled this over after he had reached the post.

He knew he could get rid of Rafael by no regular channels. Parkhurst was a straight-laced fool to whom rules and regulations were gods to be obeyed at all costs. He would never consent to replace the Assistant unless he were given a logical reason. Moreover Rafael’s internal chart effectually blocked any move by which the Assistant might be made to do harm to himself.

The controlleur set about devising plans and putting them into action.

He carefully changed the plastic discs trail markings so that instead of leading to Xanon Village they wound deeper into a remote section of the swamp.

But although he was gone a day longer, Rafael came back from his mission, bringing the overdue tax payment plus more gifts the Venusians had given him.

Grayson next dispatched Rafael, via the spare gig, in-country some eighteen kilometers to investigate a report that a saurian beast had been seen in that area. Before the Assistant left Grayson drilled several holes in the gig below the water line and plugged them with quick-melting cozar, a kind of beeswax found in the swamp.

But again the Assistant returned and placidly made his report.

There was no beast but only an oddly shaped rock outcropping which the natives had mistaken at a distance. Grayson nodded silently and this time asked no questions.

Instead he went out the screen door, paced into the compound and halted a short distance from the dome, staring up into the thick sky. Moments passed, and he glanced at his watch impatiently.

Abruptly a high pitched scream of air sounded. An instant later the aluminum shell landed, half burying itself in the spongy soil.

Some day, the men back at the base who figured the trajectory of this mail cartridge were going to miscalculate and hit the dome. Grayson picked up the shell, unscrewed its cap and dumped out its contents: mostly magazines and newspapers, a few letters.

The Earthman always went over his mail thoroughly. There were several copies of Colonial Spaceways, one of which contained an article, “The Future of the Epwa,” which he read with a good deal of interest. There were also two decks of playing cards sent by a thoughtful friend in Venus City.

One passage in the Epwa article he read several times:

Under average conditions the Epwa is a highly developed mechanism which is practically indestructible. Care should be taken, however, not to subject its mental powers to sustained strain over a long period of time. Failure to heed this warning may result in a complete breakdown of the device’s electronic brain.

The controlleur rose and called Rafael. When the Assistant appeared, Grayson took one of the decks of cards and tossed it on the table.

“I’ll show you a game,” he said, “a game that will test your powers of concentration. It’s called Solitaire.”

He explained carefully. This wasn’t ordinary Canfield solitaire. It was a better game, less ruled by chance.

“In the first part you need a partner,” Grayson said, “although it isn’t required. This partner goes through the deck, drawing one card at a time, concentrating on its suit and numerical value, but permitting only the back to be visible to you. Now here is where parapsychology or cryptesthesia comes into play. Some persons call it E.S.P., or Extra Sensory Perception. As the partner concentrates on each card, you attempt to receive his thought wave and “guess” what the card is. In this fashion you divide the deck into four packs of what you assume to be four complete suits. Of course, if you rely on chance alone, the odds against you would be pretty heavy. But since mental action probably sets off a radiation and since your electronic brain has been devised to receive such stimuli, you should do fairly well.

“The rest is simple. Drawing one card at a time from any of the four packs, you form a cross of five cards face up on the table. You play upon this cross in reverse rotation, paying no attention to suit. In other words, on a nine you can play any eight, on a queen any knave. When you have played as far as you can, the next card you draw goes in the corner, thus filling out the cross into a square. Let us suppose this card is a five. Then into each corner must go one of the other three fives and on these corner cards you build up in regular rotation: six, seven, eight, etc. according to suit.

“The object of the game is to form each corner into a complete run of one suit, but the method is far more than a simple matter of luck. It goes back to E.S.P. and your mental division of the pack by thought-concentration. Is all that clear?”

Rafael nodded and Grayson fancied he saw interest light up that plastic face. They began to play and when the controlleur had gone through the deck for the initial selection, he left the table, crossed to a chair, lit his pipe, and sat down to watch.

It was worth watching. With his head bent slightly forward and his body erect in the chair, the Assistant was the picture of concentration. He formed the cross of five cards. Moving slowly, sluffing off on the discard pile only after long thought, he began to build up three corners. But the fourth corner was stubborn and as the discard pile began to grow, it soon became evident that he was going to lose. At length he swept the cards together impatiently.

“Again!” he said to Grayson.

So again Grayson went through the deck while the Assistant mentally sorted and evaluated them. Rafael was playing hurriedly now, almost as if a high stake had been placed on the game.

For an hour Grayson watched as Rafael lost game after game. The controlleur yawned then and headed for his room. But, halfway, he stopped on impulse and slid into the chair before the radar panel. For several moments he sat there, turning dials and making adjustments. Then he leaned back, a scowl darkening his features.

The screen told a disturbing story. The Venusians were on the move; large parties from three neighboring villages were apparently converging on Village Xanon. And that could mean only one thing: the grievance ceremony, a council held by the men of the tribes to discuss an alleged wrong brought against them by an officer of the government. That’s what came of having a mealy-mouthed mechanical parrot for an Assistant.

Grayson shrugged and went to bed.

When he emerged into central quarters the next morning Rafael was still at the table, playing cards. The Earthman smiled crookedly but said nothing.

He went about his duties at the post and in the afternoon set out into the swamp to inspect his traps. He was bending over one of the snares when a spiked thorn dart whispered by his head and stuck in a nearby tree. In a fury, Grayson wheeled in time to see a Venusian thrust his head above a fern frond, stare at him defiantly and then disappear.

That settled it. It was time to put these damned aliens in their place. Grayson swung into the back trail and headed rapidly for the post. Back at the dome, he went to his room, took down a heat pistol, and flipped the chamber to see that it had a full charge. He dropped it into his pocket and strode into central quarters.

Rafael was seated at the table, playing cards.

Grayson smiled as he observed the partial fruition of his plans. If it were possible for an Epwa to do so, the Assistant already looked wan and haggard. There was a dull reddish glow about his eyes, and his plastic hands as he manipulated the cards, moved nervously and jerkily.

“I’m going to Village Xanon,” Grayson said, striding to the door. “You will stay here and take care of the post.”

Rafael looked up from the cards.

“Village Xanon is dangerous now, sir,” he said. “If I don’t hear from you within a reasonable length of time, I’ll follow.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Grayson said. “You’ll stay here and play cards. That’s an order.”

* * * *

Parkhurt’s regular inspection visit was three weeks late, and the colonial official was somewhat concerned as he nudged the electric launch to the landing stake at Blue Mold. Brooding silence hung over the post, and no light was visible through the ports of the dome. Parkhurst climbed the veranda steps.

“Halloo!” he called. “Anyone here?”

A darker shadow roused itself from a wing-back chair as Rafael, the Assistant, came forward, switching on a lamp.

“I give you greetings,” he said formally. “Grayson has not yet returned.”

Parkhurst surveyed Rafael closely. The Epwa, he was glad to see, appeared to be in good shape.”

His clothing, although showing signs of wear, was clean and neatly pressed, and his plastic face and hands seemed in perfect condition.

“Well, how’ve you two been getting on?” Parkhurst queried, lighting a cheroot. “Where is Grayson, by the way?”

“He’s at Village Xanon,” Rafael replied. “He told me to stay here and play the game.”

Parkhurst’s eyes lifted. “Game?”

“A game called Solitaire. It is played with these cards.”

The colonial official moved across to the table and, while he watched, Rafael swept the deck together and began to explain the game as Grayson had explained it to him. Listening, Parkhurst showed impatience at first; then his brow furrowed in a deep frown.

“Why didn’t he send you to Village Xanon?” he asked suddenly.

“Grayson preferred to go himself. He went to see about a grievance council the Venusians are holding.”

“Grievance co—!” Alarm sounded in Parkhurst’s voice. “Great thunder, what’s wrong?”

“I do not know. Except that Grayson struck their chief when he became insubordinate.” Parkhurst slumped slowly into a chair. A muscle quivered on his cheek. “When was he due back?” he demanded hoarsely.

“He has been gone five days. Do you wish to play the game with me?”

Five days! And the fool had struck a chief. Parkhurst turned and stared out into the silent blackness that was the great swamp. Five days! A controlleur had strict orders never, under any circumstances, to remain away from his post more than forty-eight hours. Suddenly the colonial official’s throat went dry, and a feeling of nausea churned his stomach. The cheroot slipped from his fingers to the floor.

With a queer inner horror he realized that Grayson was not going to return.

Parkhurst sat there in a stupor, cold sweat breaking out upon his body while Rafael continued to babble about the card game. His words seemed to come from far off. Something about the deck Grayson had given him, containing only fifty-one cards, an error which the Epwa had discovered and taken care of soon after the Earthman’s departure.