Joanna cocked her head to one side and wrinkled her forehead, reflectively. "Why, I don't know, now you come to ask me. I thought maybe one of the _chaks_ had given it to Mickey. Bought it in the bazaar, maybe. He loves it. Do get up off the floor, Juli!" Juli scrambled to her feet. She said, "Rindy had one. It--it terrified me. She would sit and look at it by the hour, and--I told you about it, Race. I threw it out once, and she woke up and screamed. She shrieked for hours and hours and she ran out in the dark and dug for it in the trash pile, where I'd buried it. She went out in the dark, broke all her fingernails, but she dug it out again." She checked herself, staring at Joanna, her eyes wide in appeal. "Well, dear," said Joanna with mild, rebuking kindness, "you needn't be so upset. I don't think Mickey's so attached to it as all that, and anyhow I'm not going to throw it away." She patted Juli reassuringly on the shoulder, then gave Mickey a little shove toward the door and turned to follow him. "You'll want to talk alone before Race leaves. Good luck, wherever you're going, Race." She held out her hand forthrightly. "And don't worry about Juli," she added in an undertone. "We'll take good care of her." When I came back to Juli she was standing by the window, looking through the oddly filtered glass that dimmed the red sun to orange. "Joanna thinks I'm crazy, Race." "She thinks you're upset." "Rindy's an odd child, a real Dry-towner. But it's not my imagination, Race, it's not. There's something--" Suddenly she sobbed aloud again. "Homesick, Juli?" "I was, a little, the first years. But I was happy, believe me." She turned her face to me, shining with tears. "You've got to believe I never regretted it for a minute." "I'm glad," I said dully. _That made it just fine._ "Only that toy--" "Who knows? It might be a clue to something." The toy had reminded me of something, too, and I tried to remember what it was. I'd seen nonhuman toys in the Kharsa, even bought them for Mack's kids. When a single man is invited frequently to a home with five youngsters, it's about the only way he can repay that hospitality, by bringing the children odd trifles and knicknacks. But I had never seen anything quite like this one, until-- --Until yesterday. The toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa, the one who had fled into the shrine of Nebran and vanished. He had had half a dozen of those prism-and-star sparklers. I tried to call up a mental picture of the little toy-seller. I didn't have much luck. I'd seen him only in that one swift glance from beneath his hood. "Juli, have you ever seen a little man, like a _chak_ only smaller, twisted, hunchbacked? He sells toys--" She looked blank. "I don't think so, although there are dwarf _chaks_ in the Polar Cities. But I'm sure I've never seen one."