Forbidden by strictest Galactic injunction, he could not make planetfall and interfere with a previously unscouted primitive culture. Contrariwise, neither could civilized ethic condone his abandoning such an unsuspecting culture to the bloody mercies of a Morid without every effort to correct his blunder. Hanging in stationary orbit in order to keep a fixed relation to the Morid’s landing site, the Federation commander debated earnestly with his staff until a sudden quickening of the barbarous Telethink net made action imperative. Two of the autochthons were isolated on a small island with the Morid. Unwarned, they were doomed. So he grouped his staff about him—sitting, crouching, coiling or hovering, as individual necessity demanded—and as one entity put the whole into rapport with the all-but-meaningless signals that funneled up from the Telethink station in the Florida Keys. And, in doing so, roused a consternation as great as his own and infinitely more immediate. * * * * * The flash brought Vann away from the Telethink console and out of the quonset station to stare shakenly across the tangle of mangroved islands to the west. Weyman came out a moment later, on the run, when the teeth-jarring blast of the explosion woke him. They stood together on the moon-bright sand and Vann relayed in four words the total of his information. “It fell over there,” Vann said. A pale pinkish cloud of smoke and steam rose and drifted phosphorescently toward a noncommittal moon. “Second key out,” Weyman said. “That would be Dutchman’s, where the hermit lives.” Vann nodded, drawing minimal reassurance from the fact that there had been no mushroom. “It shouldn’t be atomic.” The Gulf breeze was steady out of the west, freighted with its perpetual salt-and-mangrove smell. “The Geigers will tell us soon enough,” Weyman said. “Not that it’ll help us, with Ellis out in the launch.” They looked at each other in sudden shock of joint realization. “The launch,” Vann said. “Ellis is out there with the portable Telethink rig. We were working out field-strength ratios for personal equipment—” They dived for the quonset together. Vann, smaller and more agile than the deliberate Weyman, reached the Telethink first. “Nothing but the regular standby carrier from Washington,” Vann said. “Ellis may have been directly under the thing when it struck. He was working toward Dutchman’s Key, hoping for a glimpse of the hermit.” “Maybe he wasn’t wearing the Telethink when the blast came,” Weyman said. Then, with characteristic practicality: “Better image Washington about this while we’re waiting for Ellis to report in. Can’t use the net radio—we’d start a panic.” Vann settled himself at the console. “I’ll try. That is, if I can get across anything beyond the sort of subliminal rot we’ve been trading lately.”