“No trouble!” Tally exploded. “You damned outsider! You made me the laughing stock of Chthon by proving my girl wasn’t worth taking down. Teasing her so you could really make the point. You could have told her No at the beginning, if you didn’t want it; but no, you had to—”

“It wasn’t that. I wanted her, but—”

Tally’s eyes were calculating. “‘But—’? What were you afraid of? Nobody outside will ever see you again. You live our way now. There are no ceremonies, no two-faced rules. She wanted you, and I told her to have her fling. You can’t spawn any bastards down here, not in this climate, if that’s what got you. It just doesn’t take.”

“I know that. I—”

“You cost me face, Five. There’s only one way I can get it back.”

“There’s something else—” Aton began, but Tally had already signaled, and the two men were closing in. They were brawny; one was the member of the original greeting party who had struck him. They had taken off their skins.

Aton saw that there was no reasonable escape. He licked his lips, not bothering to remove his own water-skin. Had he really wanted to explain?

Timing. Coordination. Decision. Aton sprang. The first man had a naked foot buried in his solar plexus before he realized it. He was hurled back, collapsing bonelessly. Before he struck the ground, Aton was on his companion, wrapping a trained hand in the man’s shaggy beard, jerking the original lunge into a headlong stumble. The calloused knuckles of Aton’s free hand made a dull crunching sound on the other’s temple.

One semiconscious, retching helplessly. One dying with a fractured skull. It had taken perhaps four seconds.

Tally stared down, amazed. “Spaceman,” he said.

“You wanted it the hard way.” Aton knew he had won the man’s respect. “I tried to explain.”

Tally got the men out and came back alone. “All right. I can’t square things with you that way. Only one man I ever saw that could fight like that, and he’s not...available.”

“Spaceman?” Aton asked with interest.

“Krell farmer.”

Aton wondered. The members of the guild that farmed the deadly krell weed had developed the ancient art of karate—karate, the unarmed striking—in a different direction than had their spacefaring cousins. Both struck to disable, maim, or kill; but there was murderous power behind the spaceman’s blow, lethal science behind the farmer’s. Which school was superior? The question had never, to his knowledge, been settled. “Where is he?”

“Name’s Bossman—down below. It isn’t worth it.”

“Nothing’s worth it.”

Tally changed the subject. “I’ll take my loss and forget it. But I want to know one thing, and it isn’t much of my business. I’ll make a trade with you.”