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other’s voice in this enclosed space. “Who’s the Streamside Terror?”
    “Why, just the toughest Upland hill-and-alley brawler between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak!” said the Bluffer. “Just the roughest—why, the Terror’d chew this Bone Breaker outlaw up for breakfast—” The Bluffer’s voice abruptly lowered, and became judicious, “not that Bone Breaker’s an easy match, of course. It’s just that he’s used to fighting with that blade and shield of his in the sissy Lowland fashion. Barehanded, I’ll bet the Terror could take him any day. And the Half-Pint-Posted took the Terror.”
    Bill’s mind staggered under the impact of this additional, improbable information.
    “You mean this Shorty—a human like me,” said Bill, “fought this Streamside Terror you talk about, without weapons?”
    “Didn’t I say so?” demanded the Bluffer. “Bare-handed and man-to-man. Not only that, but beside a mountain creek— the Terror’s favorite spot. And Half-Pint licked him.”
    “How do you know—” Bill was beginning, when the Bluffer interrupted him.
    “How do I know?” shouted the Bluffer in fresh outrage. “Didn’t I carry Half-Pint on my back until we caught up with the Terror? Didn’t I stand by him and watch while they tangled? Are you questioning my word, Pick-and-Shovel—the word of the official postman between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak?”
    “No—no, of course not,” said Bill, still bewildered, “It’s just that I hadn’t heard—about it before now.” As he spoke, his mind was racing. There must be more to it than the Bluffer was telling. Probably there was some kind of gimmick that had kept the match from being the simple massacre of a human being that by rights it would have had to have been.
    Also—a new thought struck him—if Greenleaf was actually gone and his assistant was honestly in trouble, then he did indeed have a responsibility to do whatever was necessary to get her out of it. At least, to begin with, he could go and talk to this Dilbian who had taken her, and who evidently was an individual of importance among the outlaws—if not their chief. If nothing else, he could stall until the Resident returned. An ordinary broken leg should not keep the man away from his job much more than the three or four days of the round trip required to take him to a hospital ship and bring him back here.
    Bill scrambled about in his mind for words to explain his first refusal to go to Outlaw Valley to help Dirty Teeth. He was neither a quick nor easy liar and excuses did not come readily to him. Luckily, at that moment he remembered that underneath the wild improbabilities of the situation here on Dilbia, there still existed the prosaic organization of any off-world project. Project Spacepaw might be the most fouled-up human endeavor ever to take place beyond Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but behind it there had to exist the ordinary official machinery of equipment and regulation.
    “Now, listen to me!” he said to the Hill Bluffer. “I’m as good a Shorty as this Half-Pint-Posted or any other one of us you’ve met; and I’m not going to let one of my own people be held against her will if I can help it. But you’ve got to remember I’m not the head Shorty here. Before I go dashing off to Outlaw Valley, I’ve got to see if the Tricky Teacher left me any message telling me what to do. If he did, I’ve got to do what he said. If he didn’t, then I can do things my own way. You’re just going to have to wait until I see if he left that message.”
    “Well, why didn’t you say so?” demanded the Hill Bluffer, obviously relieved. “You don’t have to explain things twice to an official postman, where something like a message is concerned. If the Tricky Teacher left you a piece of mail to read before you started out, that comes before anything. Though what he should’ve done was give it to me to deliver to you. It wouldn’t have cost him anything extra, and