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SAMIA of Fife was five feet tall, exactly, and all sixty inches of her were in a state of quivering exasperation She weighed one and a half pounds per inch and, at the moment, each of her ninety pounds represented sixteen ounces of solid anger

She stepped quickly froh ht and her narrow chin, with its pronounced cleft, tre

She said, "Oh no He wouldn&039;t do it to me He couldn&039;t do it to me Captain!"

Her voice was sharp and carried the weight of authority Captain Racety boith the storm "My Lady?"

To any Florinian, of course, Captain Racety would have been a "Squire" Simply that To any Florinian, all Sarldtes were Squires But to the Sarkites there were Squires and real Squires The Captain was simply a Squire Samia of Fife was a real Squire; or the fe

"My Lady?" he asked

She said, "I ae I am my own mistress I choose to remain here"

The Captain said carefully, "Please to understand, my Lady, that no orders of mine are involved My advice was not asked I have been told plainly and flatly what I am to do"

He fumbled for the copy of his orders halfheartedly He had tried to present her with the evidence twice before and she had refused to consider it, as though by not looking she could continue, with a clear conscience, to deny where his duty lay

She said once again, exactly as before, "I am not interested in your orders"

She turned aith a ringing of her heels and moved rapidly away from him

He followed and said softly, "The orders include directions to the effect that, if you are not willing to co so, to have you carried to the ship"

She whirled "You wouldn&039;t dare do such a thing"

"When I consider," said the Captain, "who it is who has ordered "

She tried cajolery "Surely, Captain, there is no real danger This is quite ridiculous, entirely mad The City is peaceful All that has happened is that one patroller was knocked down yesterday afternoon in the library Really!"

"Another patroller was killed this dawn, again by Florinian attack"

That rocked her, but her olive skin grew dusky and her black eyes flashed "What has that to do with me? I a prepared right now It will leave shortly You will have to be on it"

"And my work? My research? Do you realize- No, you wouldn&039;t realize"

The Captain said nothing She had turned fro dress of copper kyrt, with its strands of milky silver, set off the extraordinary warm smoothness of her shoulders and upper ar more than the bald courtesy and hureat Lady He wondered why such an entirely desirable bite-sizethe scholarly pursuits of a university don

Samia kneell that her earnest scholarship made her an object ofof the aristocratic Ladies of Sark as devoted entirely to the glitter of polite society and, eventually, acting as incubators for at least, but not more than, two future Squires of Sark She didn&039;t care

They would co a book, Sale

Those were the woentle condescension and obvious conviction that it would only take a glance from themselves or a man&039;s arm about her waist to cure her of her nonsense and turn her un as far back, almost, as she could remember, because she had always been in love with kyrt, whereas od of fabrics There was no h

Che more than a variety of cellulose The chemists swore to that Yet with all their instruments and theories they had never yet explained why on Florina, and only on Florina in all the Galaxy, cellulose became kyrt It was a matter of the physical state; that&039;s what they said But ask them exactly in ay the physical state varied from that of ordinary cellulose and they were inally from her nurse

"Why does it shine, Nanny?"

"Because it&039;s kyrt, Miakins"

"Why don&039;t other things shine so, Nanny?"

"Other things aren&039;t kyrt, Miakins"

There you had it A two-voluraph on the subject had been written only three years before She had read it carefully and it could all have been boiled down to her Nanny&039;s explanation Kyrt was kyrt because it was kyrt Things that weren&039;t kyrt, weren&039;t kyrt because they weren&039;t kyrt

Of course kyrt didn&039;t really shine of itself but, properly spun, it would gleam metallically in the sun in a variety of colors or in all colors at once Another form of treatment could impart a diamond sparkle of the thread It could be made, with little effort, corade, and quite inert to almost all chemicals Its fibers could be spun finer than the most delicate synthetics and those sath no steel alloy known could duplicate

It had more uses, more versatility than any substance known to lass, metal, or plastic in any of infinite industrial applications As it was, it was the only material used for cross hairs on optical equip of hydrochrons used in hy perato where metal was too brittle or too heavy or both

But this was, as said, small-scale use, since use in quantity was prohibitive Actually the kyrt harvest of Florina went into the arments in Galactic history Florina clothed the aristocracy of a million worlds, and the kyrt harvest of the one world, Florina, had to be spread thin for that Twenty woht have outfits in kyrt; two thousand ht have a holiday jacket of the loves Twenty million more watched from a distance and wished

Theexpression for the snob It was the only idioe that was easily and exactly understood everywhere It went: "You&039;d think she blew her nose in kyrt!"

When Samia was older she went to her father

"What is kyrt, Daddy?"

"It&039;s your bread and butter, Mia"

"Mine?"

"Not just yours, Mia It&039;s S ark&039;s bread and butter"

Of course! She learned the reason for that easily enough Not a world in the Galaxy but had tried to grow kyrt on jts own soil At first Sark had applied the death penalty to anyone, native or foreign, caught s kyrt seed out of the planet That had not prevented successful s, and as the centuries passed, and the truth dawned on Sark, that law had been abolished Men from anywhere elcoht), of finished kyrt cloth

They rown anywhere in the Galaxy but on Florina was simply cellulose White, flat, weak and useless Not even honest cotton

Was it so in the characteristics of the radiation of Florina&039;s sun? So about the bacteria make-up of Florinian life? It had all been tried Sahts duplicating the known spectrun soil had been infected with Floririian bacteria And always the kyrt grehite, flat, weak and useless

There was so much to be said about kyrt that had never been said Material other than that contained in technical reports or in research papers or even in travel books For five years Sa a real book about the story of kyrt; of the land it grew on and of the people who grew it

It was a dreahter, but she held to it She had insisted on traveling to Florina She was going to spend a season in the fields and a fewto- But what did itordered back

With the sudden impulsiveness that marked her every act she ht this on Sark Grimly she promised herself she would be back on Florina in a week

She turned to the Captain and said coolly, "When do we leave, sir?"

Sa as Florina was a visible globe It was a green, springlike world, much pleasanter than Sark in cli the natives She didn&039;t like the Florinians on Sark, sapless men who dared not look at her but turned ahen she passed, in accordance with the law On their oorld, however, the natives, by universal report, were happy and carefree Irresponsible, of course, and like children, but they had charhts He said, "My Lady, would you retire to your room?"

She looked up, a tiny vertical crease between her eyes "What new orders have you received, Captain? Ann I a prisoner?"

"Of course not Merely a precaution The space field was unusually e had taken place, again by a Florinian, and the field&039;s patroller contingent had joined the rest on a h the City"

"And the connection of that with myself?"

"It is only that under the circuuard of my own (I do not minimize my own offense), unauthorized persons may have boarded the ship"

"For what reason?"

"I could not say, but scarcely to do our pleasure"

"You are ro, Captain"

"I aometrics were, of course, useless within planetary distance of Florina&039;s sun, but that is not the case now and I aency Stores"

"Are you serious?"

The Captain&039;s lean, expressionless face regarded her aloofly for a moment He said, "The radiation is equivalent to that which would be given off by two ordinary people"

"Or a heating unit soot to turn off"

"There is no drain on our power supply, ate, my Lady, and ask only that you first retire to your room"

She nodded silently and left the room Two minutes later his calm voice spoke unhurriedly into the coency Stores"