would be made, and Holliday's asking prices for land would be posted
with Emigration, together with a prospectus abstracted from the General
Galactic Survey.

He switched the interphone on again.

"Uh ... Mary? Supply me with a copy of the GenSurv on the entire
Karlshaven system. Tell Mr. Mead I'll expect him in my office sometime
this afternoon--you schedule it--and we'll go into it further."

"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Will fifteen-fifteen be all right?"

"Fifteen-fifteen's fine, uh ... Mary," Marlowe said gently.

"Yes, sir," his secretary replied, abashed. "I keep forgetting about
proper nomenclature."

"So do I, Mary, so do I," Marlowe sighed. "Anything come up that wasn't
scheduled for today?"

It was a routine question, born of futile hope. There was always
something to spoil the carefully planned daily schedules.

"Yes and no, sir."

Marlowe cocked an eyebrow at the interphone.

"Well, that's a slight change, anyway. What is it?"

"There's a political science observer from Dovenil--that's Moore II on
our maps, sir--who's requested permission to talk to you. He's here on
the usual exchange program, and he's within his privileges in asking, of
course. I assume it's the ordinary thing--what's our foreign policy,
how do you apply it, can you give specific instances, and the like."

Precisely, Marlowe thought. For ordinary questions there were standard
answers, and Mary had been his secretary for so long that she could
supply them as well as he could.

Dovenil. Moore II, eh? Obviously, there was something special about the
situation, and Mary was leaving the decision to him. He scanned through
his memorized star catalogues, trying to find the correlation.

"Mr. Secretary?"

Marlowe grunted. "Still here. Just thinking. Isn't Dovenil that nation
we just sent Harrison to?"

"Yes, sir. On the same exchange program."

Marlowe chuckled. "Well, if we've got _Harrison_ down there, it's only
fair to let their fellow learn something in exchange, isn't it? What's
his name?"

"Dalish ud Klavan, sir."

Marlowe muttered to himself: "Dalish ud Klavan, Irish, corn beef and
cabbage." His mind filed it away together with a primary-color picture
of Jiggs and Maggie.

"All right, Mary, I'll talk to him, if you can find room in the schedule
somewhere. Tell you what--let him in at fifteen-thirty. Mead and I can
furnish a working example for him. Does that check all right with your
book?"

"Yes, sir. There'll be time