"Come." The copsik's hand shoved against the small of his back. He moved in that direction, toward where the fin flowered into tuft. But where were the women?

The flying box had blocked his view. Now he saw the women through the arch, on the other ledge. Minya began struggling, crying, "Wait!

That's my husband!"

The drug slowed him down, but Gavving threw the bird into the copsik's arms, sending him tumbling backward under its mass, and tried to jump toward Minya. He never completed the first step. Two men stepped in from either side and caught his arms. They must have been waiting for just such a move. One clouted him across the head hard enough to set the world spinning. They hustled him into the but.

The copsik was studying Lawn as she studied him. He was thin, with stringy muscles; three or four ce'meters taller than Lawri herself and not much older. His blond hair and beard were raggedly cut. He was dirty from head to foot. A line of dried blood ran from his right eyebrow to the corner of his jaw. He was very much the kind of copsik who might come spinning from the sky on a sheet of bark, and hardly a convincing man of science.

But his eyes inquired; they judged her. He asked, "Citizen, what will happen to them?"

"Call me Scientist's Apprentice," Lawri said. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Quinn Tribe Scientist," he said.

That made her laugh. "I can hardly call you Scientist! Don't you have a name?"

He bristled, but he answered. "I did. Jeffer."

"Jeffer, the other copsiks don't concern you now. Get aboard the carm and stay out of the pilot's way."

He stood stupidly. "Carm?"

She slapped its metal flank and pronounced th~ syllables as she had been taught. "Cargo And Repair Module. CARM. In!"

He got through both doors and a few paces beyond, and there he stopped, gaping, trying to see in every direction at once. For the moment she left him to it. She didn't blame him. Few copsiks ever saw the interior of the carm.

Ten chairs faced into a tremendous curved window of thick glass. Images were there that couldn't be outside the glass, nor could they be reflections. They must be in the glass itself: numbers and letters and line drawings in blue and yellow and green.

Behind the chairs was thirty or forty cubic meters of empty space.

There were bars set to swivel out of the walls and floor and ceiling, and numerous loops of metal: anchorage for stored goods against the jerky pull of the motors. Even so, the cabin was only a fifth the size of the

carm. What was the rest?