He laid no plans of action—­this whole exploit must depend upon improvisation.  And, as a Free Trader, spur-of-the-moment action was a necessary way of life.  On the frontier Rim of the Galaxy, where the independent spacers traced the star trails, fast thinking and the ability to change plans on an instant were as important as skill in aiming a blaster.  And it was very often proven that the tongue—­and the brain behind it—­were more deadly than a flamer.

The sun was in Dane’s face now and he caught sight of patches of uncontaminated earth with honest vegetation—­in place of the “hot” jungle now miles behind.  That night he camped out on the edge of rough pasturage where the counter no longer flashed its warning and he was able to shed the suit and sleep under the stars with the fresh air of early summer against his cheek and the smell of honest growing things replacing the dry scent of the spacer and the languorous perfumes of Sargol.

He lay on his back, flat against the earth of which he was truly a part, staring up into the dark, inverted bowl of the heavens.  It was so hard to connect those distant points of icy light making the well remembered patterns overhead with the suns whose rays had added to the brown stain on his skin.  Sargol’s sun—­the one which gave such limited light to dead Limbo—­the sun under which Naxos, his first Galactic port, grew its food.  He could not pick them out—­was not even sure that any could be sighted from Terra.  Strange suns, red, orange, blue green, white—­yet here all looked alike—­points of glitter.

Tomorrow at dawn he must go on.  He turned his head away from the sky and grass, green Terran grass, was soft beneath his cheek.  Yet unless he was successful tomorrow or the next day—­he might never have the right to feel that grass again.  Resolutely Dane willed that thought out of his mind, tried to fix upon something more lulling which would bring with it the sleep he must have before he went on.  And in the end he did sleep, deeply, dreamlessly, as if the touch of Terra’s soil was in itself the sedative his tautly strung nerves needed.

It was before sunrise that he awoke, stiff, and chilled.  The dryness of pre-dawn gave partial light and somewhere a bird was twittering.  There had been birds—­or things whose far off ancestors had been birds—­in the “hot” forest.  Did they also sing to greet the dawn?

Dane went over the flitter with his small counter and was relieved to find that they had done a good job of shielding under Ali’s supervision.  Once the suit he had worn was stored, he could sit at the controls without danger and in comfort.  And it was good to be free of that metal prison.

This time he took to the air with ease, the salt taste of food concentrate on his tongue as he sucked a cube.  And his confidence arose with the flitter.  This was the day, somehow he knew it.  He was going to find what he sought.

It was less than two hours after sunrise that he did so.  A village which was a cluster of perhaps fifty or so house units strung along into the land.  He skimmed across it and brought the flitter down in a rock cliff walled sand pocket with surf booming some yards away, where he would be reasonably sure of safe hiding.