"YOU DUMB UPFLUXER JETFART!" Hosch screamed in Farr's face. "When I want a whole damn tree trunk fed into this hopper I'll tell you about it!" Now the Harbor supervisor shoved his bony face forward and his tone descended into a barely audible, infinitely menacing hiss. "But until I do... and if it wouldn't trouble you too much... maybe you could split the wood just a little more finely. Or..." — foul-smelling photons seeping from his mouth — "maybe you'd like to follow your handiwork into the hopper and finish your work in there? Eh?"

Farr waited until Hosch was through. Trying to defend himself, he knew from bitter experience, would only make things worse.

Hosch was a small, wiry man with a pinched mouth and eyecups which looked as if they had been drilled into his face. His clothes were filthy and he always smelled to Farr like days-old food. His limbs were so thin that Farr was confident that, with his remarkable upfluxer strength here at the Pole, he — or Dura — could snap the supervisor in two, in a fair fight...

At last Hosch seemed to exhaust his anger, and he Waved away to some other part of the hopper line. The laborers who had gathered to relish Farr's humiliation — men and women alike — gave up their surreptitious surveillance and, with the smugness of spared victims, fixed their attention back on their work.

Air seethed in Farr's capillaries and muscles. Upfluxer. He called me upfluxer, again. He watched his fists bunch...

Bzya's huge hand enclosed both Farr's own, and, with an irresistible, gentle force, pulled Farr's arms down. "Don't," Bzya said, his voice a cool rumble from the depths of an immense chest. "He's not worth it."

Farr's rage seemed to veer between the supervisor and this huge Fisherman who was getting in the way. "He called me..."

"I heard what he called you," Bzya said evenly. "And so did everyone else... just as Hosch intended. Listen to me. He wants you to react, to hit him. He'd like nothing better."

"He'd be capable of liking nothing after I take off his head for him."

Bzya threw his head back and roared laughter. "And as soon as you did the guards would be down on you. After a beating you'd return to work — to Hosch, to a supervisor who really would hate you, and wouldn't pass up an opportunity to show it — and to an extra five, or ten, years here to pay his compensation."

Farr, the remnants of his anger still swirling in him, looked up into Bzya's broad, battered face. "But I've only just started this shift... At the moment I'll be happy just to get through that."

"Good." With an immense, powerful hand Bzya ruffled Farr's hair-tubes. "That's the way to think of it... You don't have to get through your whole ten years at once, remember; just one shift at a time."