of you comparing notes."

"No, that would never do," he said bitterly. "Well, this is the end of the
assignment so far as you and I are concerned. I'm heading back for Earth."

"Of course," she said.

-------------------------------------

He had time on the way to think it all over, and over and over again, and
a great deal of it simply didn't make sense. He had enough information to
be disillusioned, sick at heart. To have crumbled an idealistic edifice
that had taken a lifetime to build. A lifetime? At least three. His father
and his grandfather before him had had the dream. He'd been weaned on the
idealistic purposes of the United Planets and man's fated growth into the
stars.

He was a third-generation dreamer of participating in the glory. His
grandfather had been a citizen of Earth and gave up a commercial position
to take a job that amounted to little more than a janitor in an obscure
department of Interplanetary Financial Clearing. He wanted to get into the
big job, into space, but never made it. Ronny's father managed to work up
to the point where he was a supervisor in Interplanetary Medical Exchange,
in the tabulating department. He, too, had wanted into space, and never
made it. Ronny had loved them both. In a way fulfilling his own dreams had
been a debt he owed them, because at the same time he was fulfilling
theirs.

And now this. All that had been gold, was suddenly gilted lead. The dream
had become contemptuous nightmare.

Finally back in Greater Washington, he went immediately from the
shuttleport to the Octagon. His Bureau of Investigation badge was enough
to see him through the guide-guards and all the way through to the office
of Irene Kasansky.

She looked up at him quickly. "Hi," she said. "Ronny Bronston, isn't it?"

"That's right. I want to see Commissioner Metaxa."

She scowled. "I can't work you in now. How about Sid Jakes?"

He said, "Jakes is in charge of the Tommy Paine routine, isn't he?"

She shot a sharper look up at him. "That's right," she said warily.

"All right," Ronny said. "I'll see Jakes."

Her deft right hand slipped open a drawer in her desk. "You'd better leave
your gun here," she said. "I've known probationary agents to get excited,
in my time."

He looked at her.

And she looked back, her gaze level.

Ronny Bronston shrugged, slipped the Model H from under his armpit and
tossed it into the drawer.

Irene Kasansky went back to her work