"Don't be a damn fool!" "I was afraid you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her own mistakes," growled Magnusson. "You're capable of it." For the first time Juli showed a sign of animation. "I was afraid to come to you, Mack. You never wanted me to marry Rakhal, either." "Water under the bridge," Magnusson grunted. "And I've got lads of my own, Miss Cargill--Mrs.--" he stopped in distress, vaguely remembering that in the Dry-towns an improper form of address can be a deadly insult. But she guessed his predicament. "You used to call me Juli, Mack. It will do now." "You've changed," he said quietly. "Juli, then. Tell Race what you told me. All of it." She turned to me. "I shouldn't have come for myself--" I knew that. Juli was proud, and she had always had the courage to live with her own mistakes. When I first saw her, I knew this wouldn't be anything so simple as the complaint of an abused wife or even an abandoned or deserted mother. I took a chair, watching her and listening. She began. "You made a mistake when you turned Rakhal out of the Service, Mack. In his way he was the most loyal man you had on Wolf." Magnusson had evidently not expected her to take this tack. He scowled and looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but when Juli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said, "Juli, he left me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. That final deal he engineered--have you any idea how much that cost the Service? And have you taken a good look at your brother's face, Juli girl?" Juli raised her eyes slowly, and I saw her flinch. I knew how she felt. For three years I had kept my mirror covered, growing an untidy straggle of beard because it hid the scars and saved me the ordeal of facing myself to shave. Juli whispered, "Rakhal's is just as bad. Worse." "That's some satisfaction," I said, and Mack stared at us, baffled. "Even now I don't know what it was all about." "And you never will," I said for the hundredth time. "We've been over this before. Nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in the Dry-towns. Let's not talk about it. You talk, Juli. What brought you here like this? What about the kid?" "There's no way I can tell you the end without telling you the beginning," she said reasonably. "At first Rakhal worked as a trader in Shainsa." I wasn't surprised. The Dry-towns were the core of Terran trade on Wolf, and it was through their cooperation that Terra existed here peaceably, on a world only half human, or less. The men of the Dry-towns existed strangely poised between two worlds. They had made dealings with the first Terran ships, and thus gave entrance to the wedge of the Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud and apart. They alone had never yielded to the Terranizing which overtakes all Empire planets sooner or later.