— I would not clutter greatly. I would take little room. I could squeeze into a corner. You would not even notice me. And I need a friend so greatly. I must pick a friend so carefully. I must find one that is tuned to me -
— Whisperer, said Decker, you are wasting your time. Whatever the hell you are driving at, you're wasting your time.
We could be good for one another. I would carve your gems and talk with you on lonely nights and sit before the fire with you, and there would be many tales we could tell each other. You, perhaps, could help me with Vatican -
— With Vatican! yelled Decker. What in the name of Christ have you to do with Vatican?
One
Jason Tennyson, fleeing for his life, came in low over the precipitous mountain range that lay to the west of Gutshot. Immediately after he caught sight of the lights marking the town, he pressed the ejection button and felt himself flung upward with a greater violence than he had expected. For a moment he was enveloped in darkness; then, as his body spun, he saw the lights of the town again and thought that he also saw the flier. But whether he saw the flier or not, he knew, was of slight importance. It would continue over Gutshot, angling slightly downward over the ocean that hemmed in the tiny town and spaceport against the towering mountains. Some fifty miles out to sea, if his calculations were correct, the flier would go into the water and be lost. And lost as well, he hoped, would be Dr. Jason Tennyson, lately court physician to the margrave of Daventry. The radar at Gutshot space base undoubtedly had picked up the flier and would track it on its course across the water, but at its low altitude, the base would soon lose contact with it.
His fall was slackening and suddenly, as the chute popped open to its full extent, he was jerked sidewise and began swinging in wide arcs.