"Want me to prepare the skull, sir?" Gilbert asked. Gilbert was eighteen, one of the youngest guides in the game area known as Lewsanna. His father had been a guide for the hunters from the outworlds, and his father's father. His father had died tracking: it was a good, clean death and Gilbert's father had never known poverty. That was the most an Earthman could expect, Gilbert thought without bitterness. For civilization had left Earth behind. Earth was in the backwaters of galactic trade. Earth was a game-preserve, with the great beasts of five dozen worlds brought to it and bred here for the hunters. It figured, naturally: you couldn't deny it. The outworlds were new; they were built as twenty-fourth century worlds should be built. Earth had been a world of ancient cities and meaningless ancient traditions. Earth was the logical place for the game-farm. Earth, once the parent of all the galactic planets, reduced to a vacation spot for the very rich and the foolhardy.... "No," Mulveen said shortly. "Don't prepare the skull. I don't want the skull." "But--" "Forget it, kid! I've hunted everywhere, wherever there's hunting left on the outworlds. When I grew jaded, they said come to Earth. Earth will be different, a hunter's paradise. You know what? It isn't different. It's the same." "If you--" "You wouldn't understand kid. Well, let's go back to camp." "The trophy--" Gilbert began. "Forget about the trophy, damnit!" Gilbert followed Mulveen in silence to camp. The beaters and camp-boys had the evening meal prepared. The sun went down over the swamplands. Gilbert ate alone. He was a cut above the beaters and camp-boys, who had willingly surrendered their civilized birthright, but he was several cuts above the hunter from the Sirian System. * * * * * Mulveen drank heavily after dinner. Gilbert watched, not caring. Of course, that might make it dangerous when they hunted tomorrow: Mulveen's reflexes might be slower. Well, it had happened before. "Boy!" Mulveen shouted, his voice thick with alcohol. Gilbert trotted up obediently. "Sir?" Mulveen smiled at him. "How would you like to earn five thousand credits?" The answer was obvious: Gilbert made fifty credits a safari and sometimes went on as many as eight a year. Tips might bring the figure to an even five hundred credits a year. The figure Mulveen had named was ten year's work. "I'm listening," Gilbert said. Mulveen paced back and forth. Something had gotten to him. Hunters were like that, Gilbert knew. They were capable of being possessed by an idea--to the exclusion of all else. Gilbert had known hunters who, so possessed, had crossed a dozen light years. "This planet," Mulveen said, "is real jerkwater, isn't it?" "If you mean what I think, yes." "What kind of law do you have?" "Only what we need. It doesn't apply to extra-terrestrials." "I thought so. Then an extra-terrestrial can commit any crime, any crime at all?"