"He asked for help, and Tredrick sent him away." The light moved closer. "But that's not all, Marah. Tredrick has found out about--us. Old Ekla talked. They're waiting for us at the ship!" III Marah turned. His eyes had a greenish, feral glint like those of a lion on the kill. He said, "I'm sorry, little man." Campbell was on his feet, now, and reasonably steady. "Think nothing of it," he said dourly. "A natural mistake." He looked at the hook and mopped the blood from his neck, and felt sick. He added, "The name's Black. Thomas Black." "It wouldn't be Campbell?" asked the woman's voice. "Roy Campbell?" He squinted into the light, not saying anything. The woman said, "You are Roy Campbell. The Spaceguard was here not long ago, hunting for you. They left your picture." He shrugged. "All right. I'm Roy Campbell." "That," said Marah softly, "helps a lot!" He could have meant it any way. His hook made a small, savage flash in the green light. "There's trouble here on Romany. Civil war. Men are going to be killed before it's over--perhaps now. Where's your place in it?" "How do I know? The Coalition is moving in on the Kraylens. I owe them something. So I came here for help. Help! Yeah." "You'll get it," said the woman. "You'll get it, somehow, if any of us live." Campbell raised his dark brows. "What goes on here, anyhow?" The woman's low voice sang and throbbed against the pipe walls. "A long time ago there were a few ships. Old ships, crowded with people who had no homes. Little, drifting people who made a living selling their odd handicrafts in the spaceports, who were cursed as a menace to navigation and distrusted as thieves. Perhaps they were thieves. They were also cold, and hungry, and resentful. "After a while the ships began to band together. It was easier that way--they could share food and fuel, and talk, and exchange ideas. Space wasn't so lonely. More and more ships drifted in. Pretty soon there were a lot of them. A new world, almost. "They called it Romany, after the wandering people of Earth, because they were gypsies, too, in their own way. "They clung to their own ways of life. They traded with the noisy, trampling people on the planets they had been driven away from because they had to. But they hated them, and were hated, just as gypsies always are. "It wasn't an easy life, but they were free in it. They could stand anything, as long as they were free. And always, anywhere in the Solar System, wherever some little lost tribe was being swallowed up and needed help, ships from Romany went to help them." Her voice dropped. Campbell thought again of the Kraylen's drum, singing its anger in the indigo night. "That was the creed of Romany," she whispered. "Always to help, always to be a refuge for the little people who couldn't adjust themselves to progress, who only wanted to die in dignity and peace. And now...." "And now," said Marah somberly, "there is civil war."