She sniffed and rubbed her cheek against his chest. "I don't know. Sometimes when I start thinking of all the planets you've seen, the strange and wonderful people, the monsters and kings you've healed, I get frightened. This one planet--and I--won't be enough to hold you. I'll wake up some morning and where your head should rest I'll find a dent in the pillow. I'll hear the rockets blast off and you'll be gone wandering among the stars the way Konrad said you would." He stiffened at Konrad's name. But she rushed on: "He used to call you The Wanderer, you know." Then she smiled at him. "I think wanderers are afraid of babies, just like seafaring men in story books were afraid of reefs and mudbanks." Jeff managed a smile. "You're wrong, dimple cheeks, babies aren't mudbanks, they're anchors. Sure they're troublesome. You have to lug them around, hoist them up and down, clean off the rust. But without an anchor in a storm, a ship, a man and a woman, will go on the rocks. "Taen?" Jeff called. Hawklike eyes appeared around the pillar. "Would you ask Garth to come sit with Kit." "You going someplace at this time of night." Then she inhaled with a great gasp of breath as she noticed the crushed skar. "Konrad!" "Very unlikely. He's probably more interested in bossing the city than in carrying out any crazy threats he once made. This airsquid undoubtedly blundered through the dome ventilators. It's a wild one. Now you go back to bed while Taen and I go raise a fuss with the Security Guards." "Couldn't you use the telephone?" Quickly she cupped her palm over his lips. "Don't answer that if you don't want to, Doctor Jeff," she laughed. "Keep your secrets. I'm not like--like Konrad." Her voice trailed away. As Jeff watched her hurrying back down the hall, he felt as though he could close his hands on something solid again. He didn't have a plan yet, but he had a plan for determining one. It was poker, it was play-by-ear, it was the exploratory operation. No one was going to kill his wife. "Garth," he whirled at the ponderous jungle man. "Get the gas gun out of my gun rack. Taen, give him an amulet with an extra lively skar-killer. Here, I'm writing a note to Kit, Garth. If she should wake up before I get back and want to go outside, give it to her. It will explain why she mustn't. It will explain what I've got to do." Jeff dressed in his study, slung his sten gun and, pressing the signal-emitter in his pocket, opened the spike-topped gate characteristic of all the great houses of the dome city. They stepped echoingly along the sidewalk.