lace. The car glided off
toward Spencer's personal planetship, waiting for him at a nearby
field.

"Don't forget to assign an officer to Dr. Leoh," the commander
muttered to his aide. Then he turned and watched the unmatchable
beauty of an Earthly sunset.

* * * * *

The aide did not forget the assignment. That night, as Sir Harold's
ship spiraled out to a rendezvous with a starship, the aide dictated
the necessary order into a autodispatcher that immediately beamed it
to the Star Watch's nearest communications center, on Mars.

The order was scanned and routed automatically and finally beamed to
the Star Watch unit commandant in charge of the area closest to the
Acquataine Cluster, on the sixth planet circling the star Perseus
Alpha. Here again, the order was processed automatically and routed
through the local headquarters to the personnel files. The automated
files selected three microcard dossiers that matched the requirements
of the order.

The three microcards and the order itself appeared simultaneously on
the desktop viewer of the Star Watch personnel officer. He looked at
the order, then read the dossiers. He flicked a button that gave him
an updated status report on each of the three men in question. One was
due for leave after an extensive period of duty. The second was the
son of a personal friend of the local commandant. The third had just
arrived a few weeks ago, fresh from the Star Watch Academy on Mars.

The personnel officer selected the third man, routed his dossier and
Sir Harold's order back into the automatic processing system, and
returned to the film of primitive dancing girls he had been watching
before this matter of decision had arrived at his desk.

VI

The space station orbiting around Acquatainia--the capital planet of
the Acquataine Cluster--served simultaneously as a transfer point from
starships to planetships, a tourist resort, meteorological station,
communications center, scientific laboratory, astronomical
observatory, medical haven for allergy and cardiac patients, and
military base. It was, in reality, a good-sized city with its own
markets, its own local government, and its own way of life.

Dr. Leoh had just stepped off the debarking ramp of the starship from
Szarno. The trip there had been pointless and fruitless. But he had
gone anyway, in the slim hope that he might find something wrong with
the dueling machine that had been used to