A girl came striding out of a giggling group. She paused as Condemeign got in her way, hefting his charge to a nearby chair. "When did it happen?" she asked. Her gray eyes widened. "Happen? When did what happen?" She reached out a hand and drew it back, while the body of the young man shuddered convulsively and one of Condemeign's supporting hands ran suddenly red with blood. Then he saw the dagger in her hand and his teeth chattered. The body clumped to the floor. "Don't be so upset," the girl said. "It's probably the way he was intended to go anyway." "But they said it wouldn't be painful!" he protested. She was very pretty, with a high-built head of red hair, a rather good nose and pale cheeks. She smiled. "I think it usually isn't," she said. "But one thing they don't tell you is that anything really goes. There are no laws against murder on Nepenthe, or against anything else. If you happen to get in the way of someone who doesn't like you before the death department has a chance to arrange their histrionics, the front office calls it cricket." "I suppose ... I suppose," began Condemeign, wiping his sweaty forehead with the sleeve of his pajamas, "that the death department never wastes a good set-up." He stepped back as a couple of attendants came out of a corner, finally, and took the body away. A few interested revelers went back to their carousing. "I haven't been here long enough to find out," the girl said. "But those boys and girls are high-priced talent. And Doctor Munro is a cagey sort. He probably has the first penny he ever made in his counterfeiting machine as a boy." She paused, watching Condemeign's face flicker from white to pink and back again. "Wait here a minute," she said, and then came back with a beaker of something alcoholic and highly refreshing. "I'm Firelie Gluck," she remarked, following the convulsions of his Adam's apple as he drained the glass. He tossed the beaker onto a pile of dead streamers and stood up. "I'd like to know how he was killed without my knowing it," he said. "Somebody probably slipped that dirk into him when you weren't looking. You know, like this...." She fell against him suddenly and pinched his ribs. Then she recovered, laughing. Condemeign shuddered. In the thin, sharp shock of her fingers he felt the planners sculpturing death out of dreams into quiet, almost joyous forms. Suddenly he seized her hands and examined the fingers while she smiled up into his face. Then he sighed with relief. There was no poison ring, no barbed, dripping hypodermic crawling its point with icy death. Her nails were clean, unpainted. He tore at her wrists and she giggled, writhing in his grasp, and there was nothing there, up to the elbow, but smooth, pink skin. [Illustration: _Firelie Gluck fell against him suddenly and pinched him. Condemeign shuddered, for he felt the planners sculpturing death out of dreams into quiet, almost joyous forms._]