Roald's father had known that the cheapest way to relieve an emergency was to alleviate the causes behind it, unless it were a natural disaster. For this reason, he had organized a corps of special agents to penetrate behind the scenes to straighten out the causes and cut short the emergencies that Universal Relief had to pay for. "Apparently there is a definite force operating on Lyrane," Roald was saying to his elite corps, "that caused these men, who had been living by the standards of that civilization and becoming rich from it, to cease the activity which they had profited by." "Could it be a religious doctrine?" one of them asked. "Possibly. It could be anything. The fact is we don't know--and we should. So we're going to Lyrane. For the Main Office, this is a Class A; but for us it is a Class AA!" * * * * * Erol Garbin sat on the cool stone terrace of the mountain lodge, gazing out over the small valley with the golden orange sun of Lyrane setting behind the mountains. The cool evening breeze gently rearranged his white hair and brushed over the creased forehead and the worried eyes. He looked up to see his daughter come out on to the terrace. She was a comely young woman of slight build and apparently sensitive nature as vivified in her piquant features. He gave her a wistful smile, at which she rushed into his arms and buried her head in his shoulder, which was still powerful despite his age. Her body quivered with muffled sobs. "Yma, my dearest Yma," he said tenderly. "Why didn't you marry, so that you would have none of this? You could be leading your own life, instead of bearing my burden." "You are no burden, Father. You are my life. And now that your life is threatened--" He knew what had upset her. He had heard the newscasts too--yes, the video still operated, controlled by the people. He had heard the names of his old friends--Fredrikson, Tomlin, Masschau--all dead by violence. "Why do you keep silent?" his daughter asked with a little child's pleading. "Where is the protection you were offered? Why don't you tell the people?" The world was mad and destructive in the eyes of the child--the woman who was a child in the face of this dilemma. He gently quieted her with a large, steady hand that pressed her head to him. "It would do no good. Arnson tried it." She looked up with hope in her eyes. "He spoke to a special meeting of his stockholders and tried to tell them. They scorned it as a wild fantasy to excuse his betrayal. They issued him an ultimatum--work! He said that they would have to believe him; he couldn't work. They killed him." The hope slid away and her eyes assumed the depths of despair and bitterness. Despair for the future, and bitterness for the past. And she thought of the past--for she dared not think of the future. Where does violence start, she wondered. Trace it to its roots; what's its source, what's its manifestation?