"Are they really from the Melungeon Navy?" she asked Singh in a low voice as the last of the spacers disappeared into the house.

"Yes, indeed," Singh agreed. He gave a faintly rueful shrug. "Maxwell, Lord Orloff, arrived in a warship three weeks ago. He and his cronies as well as most of his crew are at the Six Pylons twenty-five kilometers from here. You've seen the pylons, no doubt?"

"From a distance," Nessler said. "We hope to visit the site ourselves tomorrow, if transport can be arranged. But why doesn't his crew have food?"

Singh shrugged again. "You'd have to take that up with Lord Orloff, I'm afraid," he said. "I've had very little contact with him. He pays quite well for the needs of his immediate entourage, but the common spacers appear to be destitute. Kuepersburg isn't a wealthy metropolis—" He and the two Manticorans exchanged tight smiles. "—but we can't very well let fellow human beings starve. We've been providing basic requirements to the poor fellows, and they sometimes find a taker for a bit of their vessel's equipment."

"They're stripping their own ship to buy food?" Mincio said in surprise. "Surely that costs Melungeon more than it would to pay their crews properly — or at least to provide rations?"

"Sometimes what officials think are pragmatic decisions seem remarkably short-sighted to others," Singh said. "That was as surely true when I was home on Krishnaputra as it appears to be among the Melungeons. And certainly—"

Before continuing he glanced both ways down the street, empty except for the playing children again.

"Certainly it is true of the way the League deals with all the worlds of this region, particularly in the choice of officials the League sends here."

"There's also the matter that the cost of the policy is generally borne by a department other than the one which makes that policy," Nessler said drily. "The phenomenon isn't unique to the Melungeon Navy."