mile after mile of hydrogen compounds. The superintendent's senses probed in vain for the enor-mously complex
compounds that were the preferred food of his kind. Several much smaller bodies were gravitating about each of
these plots, but none was large enough to hold the light elements in the liquid or gaseous form necessary for food
culture.
The next unit had the merit of interesting appearance, if nothing else. In addition to the more or less standard quota
of bodies circling it, it possessed a regular halo of minute particles traveling in a solidly interwo-ven maze of
orbits just outside the atmosphere. On the surface, and even in the atmosphere itself, its cultures were flourishing.
The superintendent paused to take a sample, and had to admit that once again the young-ster had not done too
badly.
His temper cooling, he rode the farm plot most of the way around its orbit, taking an occasional taste and growing
calmer by the moment. By the time he left the limits of its atmosphere, he was almost his normal self.
This, however, did not last long enough even for him to get rid of the globe's orbital speed, to say nothing of
resuming his drop toward the sun. He had slanted some distance inward and fallen well behind the ringed sphere
when his attention was drawn to another, much smaller object well to one side of his line of flight.
Physically, there was little remarkable about it. It was less massive even than his own body, though a short period
of observation disclosed that it was in an orbit about the central furnace, just as the farm plots were. Sometimes its
outline was clear, at others it blurred oddly. Its bright-ness flickered in an apparently meaningless pattern. Merely
on its physi-cal description, there was nothing remarkable about it, but it seized and held the superintendent's
puzzled attention. Off his planned course though it was, he swung toward it, wondering. The student had
mentioned no friends or co-workers
Gradually, details grew clearer and the superintendent's feelings grew grimmer. He did not like to believe what he
saw, but the evidence was crowding in.
"Help! Please help! Master!"
The bubble of horror burst, and one of anger grew in its place. Not one of his own kind, injured or dying and an
object of terror and revul-sion thereby; this thing was a slave. A slave, moreover, well within the limits of the
farm, where it had no business to be without supervision; a slave who dared call on him for help!
"What are you doing here?" The superintendent sent the question crackling along a tight beam toward the
apparently helpless creature. "Did you enter this region without orders?"
"No, Master. I was...ordered."
"By whom? What happened to you? Speak more clearly!"
"By—I cannot, Master. Help me!" The irregular flickering of the slave's auroral halo brightened fitfully with the
effort of radiating speech.
Unsympathetic as the superintendent normally was to such beings, he realized that help must be given if he were
to learn anything. Con-quering a distinct feeling of repugnance, he moved up beside the slave to investigate its
injuries. He expected, naturally, to find the visible results of a thorough ion-lashing, that being the principal
occupational hazard faced by the slaves; but what he actually saw almost made him forget his anger.
The unfortunate creature's outer crust was pitted—dotted and cratered with a pattern of circular holes which
resembled nothing the superinten-dent had ever encountered. He knew the long, shallow scars of an ion-lashing
and the broad, smoothed areas which showed on the crust of one of his people when close exposure to a sun had
boiled away portions of his mass. These marks, however, looked almost as though the slave had been exposed to a
pelting by granules of solid matter!
A ridiculous thought, of course. The stupidest slave could detect and avoid the occasional bits of rock and metal
which were encountered in the interstellar void. After all, they had the same sensory equipment and physical
powers as the masters. An unprejudiced judge might even have said they were of the same species as the masters.
Whatever had caused the creature's injury, there was little that could be done for it. Grudgingly, inspired far more
by curiosity than by sympa-thy, the superintendent did that little, supplying hydrocarbons and other organic matter
lately skimmed from the ringed planet.
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