"Here, we have the records of hundreds of cases like this one. Some are worse, some are not so bad. Every one of them had to be--and was--cracked by members of our Corps. This is just another of those minor, routine incidents that keep cropping up all over the galaxy. It's our problem now, and we'll get to work on it." He turned. "Where do you want to start, Banasel?" "Well--competition's the life of trade." "That comes later." Lanko shook his head. "There's an alien or so to be taken care of first, you know." "I know. It's fairly obvious." "So, we've got to find him--or them." Musa had regained his self-control. "What about these birds in hand?" Banasel shrugged. "Small fry. We'll take care of them later." He walked over to the workbench, picking up Lanko's sword. "I wondered about this before," he said. "Now, I'm sure about it. It simply doesn't match a normal technology for this period." Musa looked at him curiously. "But there are a lot of those around Norlar," he said. "They're a rarity in the Galankar, to be sure, but--" "That's what we mean," Lanko told him. "Too many anachronisms. First, we have this sword. Then, we meet these priests of Kondaro, who discuss meteorology, navigation, and pilotage with considerable understanding. We've had communicators planted on that ship for several days now, and I still can't see how the technology was developed that allowed the manufacture of some of their instruments. We should have noticed something wrong a long time ago. "The priests use sextants, watches, compasses. And, just to make it worse, we have one video recording of a priest laying out a course on an accurate chart. He was using a protractor, which was divided into Galactic degrees. That was the clincher. Somebody's out of place, and we've got to find him--or them." He took the sword from Banasel. "I think we'd better go on to the eastern continent, see what we can find, then we can deal with our friends. But first, Ban, you'd better run out a call for one of the Sector Guardsmen to back us up if necessary. We could run into something too hot for us to handle." Banasel nodded and turned to the communicator. Lanko dropped into the pilot seat, glanced at the screens, and moved controls. In the viewscreen, the sea tilted, drew farther away, then became a level, featureless blue expanse. * * * * * "Well, here's your eastern continent. In fact, this is the city of Kneuros. It's where you wanted to go, isn't it?" Musa looked at Banasel thoughtfully. "Yes," he admitted. "It's where I thought I wanted to go, but now I really know what I wanted in the first place." "Oh?" "Certainly. I was restless. I thought I liked being a trader in Karth, and I was a fairly good trader, too. But I was just getting things at secondhand. I turned down just what I really wanted, because it scared me. That was a long time ago." He looked at the control panel. He'd understood such panels once, some years ago.