（外文电子版资料）TWOKch04.docVIP

FOUR CAPTAIN ARON, of the extremely remote world of Mulm, and his young niece Dani took up residence late that evening in a rented house in an old quarter of Uldunes port city of Zergandol. It had been a strenuous though satisfactory day for both of them. Much business had begun to roll. Goth, visibly struggling for the past half hour to keep her eyelids open wide enough to be able to look out, muttered goodnight to the captain as soon as theyd located two bedrooms on the third floor of the house, and closed the door to one of them behind her. The captain felt boneweary himself but his brain still buzzed with the events of the day and he knew he wouldnt be able to sleep for a while. He brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen and took it up to a dark, narrow fourthstory balcony which encircled the house, where he sipped it from a mug, looking around at the sprawling, inadequately lit city. Zergandol, from what he had seen of it, was a rather dilapidated town, though it had one neatly modern district. One might have called it quaint, but most of the streets and buildings were worn, cracked, and rather grimy; and the architecture seemed a centuriesold mixture of conflicting styles. The house they were in looked like a weathered layer cake, four round sections containing two rooms each, placed on top of one another, connected by a narrow circular stairway. Inside and out, it was old. But the rent was moderatehe wasnt sure yet where they would stand financially by the time they were done with Uldune and Uldune was done with them; and the house was less than a mile up a winding street from the edge of the spaceport and the shipyards of the firm of Sunnat, Bazim Filish where, during the following weeks, the Venture would be rebuilt. The extent to which the ship would be rebuilt wasnt settled yet. So far thered been time for only a brief preliminary discussion with the partners. And the day had brought an unexpected development which would make it possible to go a great