ers you have written for my class. I'd like to have you meet
them. My apartment--eight-thirty."

It was a command rather than an invitation. Dirrul accepted.

III

As soon as the professor had gone his fear vanished. What he had said
to Dr. Kramer gave away no secrets and, in any case, he was crediting
the professor with a perception he did not have. Ever since first
joining the Movement, when he was still in school, Dirrul had taken
such pains to conceal his motives that it would have required a good
deal more than Dr. Kramer's clumsy prying to reveal them.

He had deliberately patterned his attitudes and habits upon a
composite average, even to a mild and starry-eyed criticism of the
system which was more or less expected from the ambitious young men of
the Air-command.

Dr. Kramer's ecstatic praise of the system was the typical emotional
reaction of the older generation. The professor may actually have been
convinced of the truth of his own fuzzy propaganda. It was that sort
of blind faith which still held the Planetary Union together.

Before returning to the Air-Command base at noon, Dirrul sought out
Paul Sorgel and reported that Glenna and Hurd were safely on their way
to Vinin. Apologetically, he mentioned Dr. Kramer's invitation,
expecting to elicit Sorgel's scorn. Instead the Vininese agent was
enthusiastic.

"Wonderful, Eddie!" he said. "Engineer it so they'll ask you back.
We've never got one of our people in with the older science crowd
before. Feel them out--we might pick up some converts. I won't need
you at the next few meetings of the Movement--they'll be largely
reorganizational, you know. I've been reading over Glenna's notes on
the Plan. With one or two modifications we should be able to carry it
out."

At eight-thirty that evening Dirrul was admitted to Dr. Kramer's
apartment. He was neither overwhelmed by the professor's excessive
courtesy nor impressed by the other guests. They were from the faculty
of the Advanced Air University, elderly, respected and distinguished,
names known for a generation everywhere in the Planetary Union.

To them, Edward Dirrul was merely a curiosity, a live specimen mounted
for analysis. He had criticised their system. They intended to wring
out the strands of his motivation, classify them, speculate and
theorize upon them--and perhaps, ultimately, do the whole thing up as
a monograph.

Dirrul knew why Kramer had selected him for study rather than any of