ing the
air-taxi hop from Xanadu, the resort two hundred miles off the coast of
California, to prepare my bitter statement. Words come fluently when an
earned leave has been pulled peremptorily out from beneath you; a leave
that still had twenty-nine days to go. But I was brief; the news flasher
had canceled much of the bite of my anger; it took me something under
one hundred and twenty seconds, including repetition of certain words
and phrases.

Gravis lived up to his name; he didn't bat an eye. He handed me a thin
folder; three of its sheets were facsimile extrapolations of probot
reports; the fourth was an evaluation-and-assignment draft; all were
from Galactic Survey Headquarters, NAF, in Montreal. The top three were
identical, excepting probot serial numbers and departure and arrival
times. GSS 231 had been located in its command orbit above a planet that
had not yet been officially named but was well within the explored
limits of the space sector assigned NAFGS by the interfederational body,
had been monitored by three robot probes--described as being in _optimum
mechanical condition_--on three distinctly separate occasions, and all
devices that could be interrogated from outside had triggered _safe and
secure_. But no human contact had been accomplished. The fourth
sheet--which bore the calligraphy on its upper right corner: _Attention
Callum_--assumed that the crew of 231, a survey team and con alternate,
had met with an accident or series of accidents of undetermined origin
and extent in the course of carrying out the duty described as
_follow-up exploration_ on the Earth-type planet, _herein and heretofore
designated Epsilon-Terra_, and must therefore be considered--

"The news is--" I started to say.

"Pure delirium," Gravis interrupted. "Haven't you read Paragraph Six? We
know exactly where the ship is because it's exactly where it should be.
It's the crew that's missing."

Paragraph Seven concluded: _We therefore recommend that an agent of
experience be dispatched soonest to the designated star system._

"Experienced or expendable?" I muttered.

"Ivy, after ten years in Interstel, you should know that experience and
expendability are synonymous."

* * * * *

Inside the GS section of the Lunar Complex, I had the occasion to think
semantically again.

Words like _instanter_ and _soonest_ seldom match their literal meaning
when applied to the physical transport of huma