The night closed in upon him—the night, and the narrow street; the alien sounds and smells and stir of Gandor City. A cadet from the Federation fleet pushed past him, a moss-furred Callistan crustach perched on his shoulder. Behind the cadet came two spask-masked berlon prospectors, up from the Hertzog fields, leading their lumbering flipper-tentacled coddob by a chain run through its gill-slits. The throb of the atmosphere compressors pressed in like a giant heartbeat, punctuated by the rattle of surface carriers, the shrill wail of tricol pipes. A sweetish, slightly nauseous scent of thes-wood flares and Martian paggod eddied from the doorway of a greasy-looking grill that placarded "Genuine Earth Meats—No Synthetics, No Alien Substitutes!"

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