Illustrated by FINLAY
On a bleak, distant unchartered world two ships laywrecked and a lone man stared at a star hyacinth. Itsbrilliance burned into his retina ... and he knew thatmen could easily kill and kill for that one beauty alone.
The robbery of the Dosey AsteroidsShipping Station in aremote and spottily explored sectionof space provided the newscastingsystems of the Federationof the Hub with one of thejuiciest crime stories of the season.In a manner not clearly explained,the Dosey AsteroidsCompany had lost six months'production of gem-quality cutstar hyacinths valued at nearly ahundred million credits. It lostalso its Chief Lapidary and seventy-eightother company employeeswho had been in the stationdome at the time.
All these people appeared atfirst to have been killed by gunfire,but a study of their bodiesrevealed that only in a few instanceshad gun wounds been theactual cause of death. For themost part the wounds had beeninflicted on corpses, presumablyin an attempt to conceal the factthat disaster in another and unknownform had befallen the station.
The raiders left very few clues.It appeared that the attack on thestation had been carried out by asingle ship, and that the locks tothe dome had been opened fromwithin. The latter fact, of course,aroused speculation, but led theinvestigators nowhere.
Six years later the great DoseyAsteroids robbery remained anunsolved mystery.
The two wrecked spaceshipsrested almost side by side nearthe tip of a narrow, deep arm ofa great lake.
The only man on the planet saton a rocky ledge three miles uphillfrom the two ships, gazingbroodingly down at them. He wasa big fellow in neatly patchedshipboard clothing. His handswere clean, his face carefullyshaved. He had two of the castaway'straditional possessionswith him; a massive huntingbow rested against the rocks, anda minor representative of theclass of life which was thisworld's equivalent of birds washopping about near his feet. Thiswas a thrush-sized creature witha jaunty bearing and bright yelloweyes. From the front of itsround face protruded a short,narrow tube tipped with small,sharp teeth. Round, horny knobsat the ends of its long toes protectedretractile claws as itbounded back and forth betweenthe bow and the man, giving aquick flutter of its wings on eachbound. Finally it stopped beforethe man, stretching its neck tostare up at him, trying to catchhis attention.
He roused from his musing,glanced irritably down at it.
"Not now, Birdie," he said."Keep quiet!"
The man's gaze returned to thetwo ships, then passed brieflyalong a towering range of volcanoson the other side of thelake, and lifted to the cloudlessblue sky. His eyes probed on,searching the sunlit, empty vaultabove him. If a ship ever cameagain, it would come from there,the two wrecks by the lake armalready fixed in its detectors; itwould not come gliding along thesurface of the planet....
Birdie produced a sharp, plaintivewhistle. The man looked atit.
"Shut up, stupid!" he told it.
He reached into the inner pocketof his coat, took out a smallobject wrapped in a piece ofleather, and unfolded the leather.
Then it lay in his cuppedpalm, and blazed with the brillianceof twenty diamonds, seemingto flash the fires of the spectrumfuriously from every facetedsurface, without ever quitesubduing the pure violet luminancewhich made a star hyacinthimpossible to imitate or,once seen, to forget. The most