It wasn't that thought that made his heart sink. It was that next weekend was when Miran's windroller raised sail and when he planned to be aboard it. Now, he'd be gone conducting the hunting party up in the hills. Green looked appealingly at Miran, but the merchant's shoulders rose beneath the yellow robe as if to say, "What can I do?" He was right. Miran couldn't suggest that he too go along on the hunt, and thus give Green a chance to slip aboard afterward. The day on which the _Bird of Fortune_ was scheduled to leave the windbreak was absolutely the last date on which it could set sail. He couldn't afford to take the chance of being caught in the rains in the middle of the vast plains. 6 All the next day Green was too busy setting up the schedule of the hunting party to have time to be gloomy. But when night came he seemed to fold up inside himself. Could he pretend to be sick, too, and be left behind when the party set out? No, for they would at once assume that he had been possessed by a demon and would pack him off to the Temple of Apoquoz, God of Healing. There he'd be under lock and key until he proved himself healthy. The terrible part about going to the Temple of Apoquoz was that it made death almost inevitable. If you didn't die of your own disease you caught somebody else's. Green wasn't worried about catching any of the many diseases he'd be exposed to in the Temple. Like all men of terrestrial descent, he carried in his body a surgically implanted protoplasmic entity which automatically analyzed any invading microscopic organisms and/or viruses and manufactured antibodies to combat them. It lived in the space created by the removal of his appendix; when working to fulfill its mission it demanded food and radiated a heat that assured its host of its heartening presence. An increased appetite plus a slight fever indicated that it was killing off the disease and that within several hours it would successfully repel any boarders. In the two years Green had been on the planet it had had to attack at least forty times; Green calculated that he would have been dead each and every time if it had not been for his symbiote. Knowing this didn't help him. If he played sick he'd be locked up and couldn't get on the 'roller. If he went on the hunting party he missed the boat, too. Suppose he were to disappear the night before the party, to hide on the windroller while the castle vainly looked for him? Not very likely. The first thing that would occur to Zuni would be to order the windbreak closed and all 'rollers searched for a possible stowaway. And if that happened Miran would be so delayed that it was unlikely he'd sail. Even if he, Green, hid in Miran's cabin, where he would probably be safe, there would still be the inevitable and totally frustrating delay.