he future of your
world depends on you, Eddie--don't let it down."

"I'll go," Dirrul whispered.

As Eddie made up his mind his internal tension relaxed and he was
filled with a sense of well-being. When he thought about it he
couldn't understand why he had hesitated--unless perhaps what Sorgel
suggested was true--that his contact with the Ad-Air faculty had
blunted and nearly perverted his established sense of values.

An hour later Dirrul boarded the battered antiquated space cargo
carrier on the launching rack at Barney's emergency field. At the last
minute Sorgel pressed a curious disk into his hand. Made of a very
light metal and suspended from a short chain it was two inches in
diameter and covered with a complex grid design.

"Put it around your neck before you land, Eddie. Don't remove under
any circumstances until you report. Give it to the Chief then. He'll
know I sent you because it's my own identification activator." Sorgel
clasped Dirrul's hand warmly. "When you land on Vinin take the North
Field below the capital. It's the HQ operational center. Use Wave-code
three-seven-three and they'll know you're friendly."

IV

After the launching space-flight was normally a monotonous routine.
The course was charted by automatic navigators and the vast pattern of
interlocking machinery and safety devices was electronically
controlled by robot relays from the pilot master-panel. The chief
function of a trained space-pilot, aside from his services as a
diplomat, was to handle emergency situations for which automatic
responses could not be built into the machinery.

Dirrul, however, could not depend a great deal upon the robot devices.
He had to avoid the well-traveled and well-charted commercial
space-lanes. He had to be constantly on the alert for the telltale
white of a police cruiser. A cargo carrier was the slowest ship in the
universe--Dirrul could outrun nothing, not even a playboy's sport
jalopy, and inspection by the customs police would have been
disastrous.

He followed a roundabout route, keeping as far from inhabited planets
as he could, and he made good time. In ninety-five days he had reached
the mythical border in space, which divided the territory of the
Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy.

He was almost at midpoint in the galaxy. On the glazed screen of his
space-map the mirrored pinpricks of sun systems glittered like
microscopic gems scattered over the curve of a gigantic blac