"Let me see it."

It was a box containing a narrow bed, a cabinet, a small table, two chairs. A rug half-covered the bare wood of the floor. A jug held scummed water and a bowl had a chipped rim. Avro assessed this at a glance then he was at the cabinet, searching, the table, the drawers. They yielded nothing and he dropped to his knees and checked the underside of the bed, the chairs, finally stripping the cot and examining the bare, wooden structure.

Nothing aside from a few crumpled papers, some packets of dried fruit, a book, a folder of bright pictures, a deck of cards. These things he checked with minute attention, holding each of the pasteboards to the light, running his fingers over their edges. Finally he turned his attention to the room itself, scanning each wall, the ceiling, the floor bared when he moved aside the rug.

Again he found nothing and stood, thoughtful, trying to put a man into the chamber, trying to guess what that man would do.

Guessing, for he lacked data on which to base an extrapolation. The essential ingredient to promote his honed talent. Given a handful of facts he could predict the logical outcome of any event; without them he could only make assumptions. A man, alone on a strange world-how would he have safeguarded his secret?

Again Avro checked the room, looking for the fifteen symbols which would tell him all he needed to know: the sequence in which the biomolecular units of the affinity twin had to be assembled. The secret which would give the Cyclan galactic domination.

But he looked for it without success.

A failure he had expected, yet to have ignored the possibility of success would have been insane stupidity. An error equal in magnitude to that made by Tron. To have had Dumarest in his grasp and then to have lost him. Death had been a merciful punishment.

Avro looked once more at the room. A small, bare place, cold, featureless. One Dumarest had known as he must have known so many others. Moving on to leave nothing of himself behind. And yet there had to be more.