ister them in hotels; they didn't need personal service of that
kind. All they wanted to do was look. But they wouldn't pay for
looking. They had no interest in Broadway plays or the acts in the
night-clubs--at least, not enough to induce them to pay to see them.
This particular group had wanted to see a hotel. They had wandered
through it, looking at everything and laughing fit to kill at the
carpets on the floor and the electric lighting and such. But when the
management had hinted that payment for such services as letting them
look should be forthcoming, they had handed half a credit to someone
and walked out. Then they had gone to the corner of Fifty-first and
Madison and looked for nothing.

Fifty credits for a shipload. Three shiploads a year. Hell, give 'em
the benefit of the doubt and say _ten_ shiploads a year. In a hundred
years, they'd add another fifty thousand to Earth's resources.

McLeod grinned.

And waited.

* * * * *

They came for him, eventually, as McLeod had known they would.

But they came long before he had expected. He had given them six
months at the least. They came for him at the end of the third month.

It was Jackson, of course. It would have to be Jackson. He walked into
the cheap little room McLeod had rented, followed by his squad of men.

He tossed a peculiar envelope on the bed next to McLeod.

"Letter came for you, humorist. Open it."

McLeod sat on the edge of the bed and read the letter. The envelope
had already been opened, which surprised him none.

It looked very much like an ordinary business letter--except that
whatever they used for paper was whiter and tougher than the paper he
used.

He was reminded of the time he had seen a reproduction of a Thirteenth
Century manuscript alongside the original. The copy had been set up
in a specially-designed type and printed on fine paper. The original
had been handwritten on vellum.

McLeod had the feeling that if he used a microscope on this letter the
lines and edges would be just as precise and clear as they appeared to
the naked eye, instead of the fuzziness that ordinary print would
show.

The way you tell a synthetic ruby from a natural ruby is to look for
flaws. The synthetic doesn't have any.

This letter was a Galactic imitation of a Terran business letter.

It said:

Dear Mac,

I am happy to report that your book, "Interstellar Ark," is
a smash hit. It looks a