Free Masters of Everon by Gordon R. Dickson

board the rotorcraft, but take off across country northward, on foot. The fact was he had never really calmed down since the encounter with Chavel. He was showing now the same sort of excitement he had exhibited on the flight to the Constable's home from the spaceport.
    "In, Mikey!" Jef finally managed to push the maolot through the entrance and hurried to squeeze in behind him. Seated and holding Mikey wedged against the farther side of the craft with his knees, Jef turned to say a last word to Armage and Martin.
    "I appreciate all this," he told the Constable. "You'll keep an alert here for anyone with information on the whereabouts of my brother's grave—?"
    "Absolutely," said the Constable. "Good luck, now. You understand the pilot's not allowed to take you beyond the edge of grazing territory? It's one of our ordinances aimed to saving fuel and engine-wear. Any travel beyond the plains country has to be on foot or animal, except official or emergency travel."
    "It's all right," said Jef. "I knew about that. That's why I brought this backpacking equipment I'll do fine. Good-bye then. Martin—"
    Martin, who was standing half a dozen steps off, took one small step closer to the craft. "Yes?" he said.
    "I wanted to thank you, too—"
    "Never mind. Think nothing of it—nothing at all." Martin's speech was rapid, as if his mind was elsewhere and he resented the time being wasted in social exchange. He had been this way all morning, a complete change of mood from his attitude when Jef had last seen him, the night before. Martin seemed now to have lost interest in Jef and Mikey—almost to the point of regretting that he had ever had anything to do with them. He had not mentioned the note from Jef.
    Jef took his determination in both hands.
    "I put a message under your door last night—" he began quietly to Martin, as Armage turned away out of earshot.
    "Oh, yes. Thank you. Very nice of you," said Martin. "However, it's hardly likely that I'd have need of your assistance, since our paths lie in different directions. But thank you, by all means—and I believe it's time you were following your beast aboard, there."
    "But you did say it was possible Mikey and I might be useful to you, and that was the reason you wanted to keep track of where we were," said Jef stiffly. "If you still think that would be useful—"
    "Not at all, not at all—the way things look, now that I'm actually here and have a better view of them. Simply disregard what I said, Mr. Robini. And now—"
    "Good-bye, then," said Jef, clearly and deliberately, determined not to be hustled off in such a manner.
    "Good-bye, good-bye," said Martin.
    The Constable slammed the rotorcraft door closed. "Strap in, sir," said the driver of the craft, over his shoulder. "Ready to lift."
    Jef strapped in both Mikey and himself. The rotorcraft lifted with an unexpected lurch and the ground fell away below them as they headed northward, away from the artificially landscaped lawn and neatly planted trees of the Constable's home.
    But with the upward bound of the craft into the air, Jef felt a curiously corresponding bound in his own spirits. Suddenly he was conscious of a vast feeling of relief. For the first time it dawned on him that he was now relieved of all obligations—to Martin or to anyone else.
    In an unexpected sense, just now, Martin had set him free. If the man had accepted—even conventionally accepted—the idea of a debt of action due on Jef's part, Jef would still have been tied to his affairs and whatever connection they had with the affairs of the Everon government, in the person of Armage and others like him. As it was, apparently both Martin and the Constable were happy to see the last of him; and, more than a little to his own astonishment, he was overwhelmingly happy to see the last of them.
    For the first time he recognized some of the hidden depths of feeling with which he had come out here. He had been expecting to encounter an alien world with all