ne, add them up. It
comes out eight. Not nine. Eight. But Diomed is a nine planet system.
Bless Ed Horton. What happened to the missing planet?"

Dahlinger w h o o p e d. "They didn't know they had one!"

Travis grinned. "With surety. They didn't know it existed. If they had
their astrology would certainly have shown it. So it had obviously,
like our own Pluto at a similar time, never been discovered."

He paused once again while Dahlinger and Trippe regarded him with
delight.

"And you," Trippe said, "you showed them where it was."

Travis clucked. "I did not. For one thing, I didn't know where it was.
I simply told him, very regretfully, that there _was_ one, but the
situation being what it was, I couldn't allow him to use our
telescopes to plot its orbit. Unless, you see, there existed a
concrete agreement between us.

"I added that I had heard that Earthmen would shortly be leaving his
planet. Very unhappily I told him he could not expect to produce a
telescope of the necessary power within at least the next hundred
years. And even then, it would be many more years before they actually
found it. I was very sorry about the whole business, so I just thought
I'd drop by to offer my regrets."

"And he leaped at the chance."

"No. You rush to conclusions. He did not leap at the chance. He sat
very quietly thinking about it. It was a gruesome sight. I could
sympathize with him. On the one hand he had us, the unknown,
moon-moving Us, with which he wanted no traffic whatever. But on the
other side there was the knowledge of that planet moving all unwatched
out in the black, casting down its radiations, be they harmful or
good, and no way to know in what sign the thing was, or what house, or
what effect it would have on him, _was having_ on him, even as he sat
there. Oh he struggled, but I knew I had him. He signed the contract.
I think I may say, that it is among the most liberal contracts we have
ever signed."

There was a long moment of silence in the ship. The young men sat
grinning foolishly.

"So let me hear no more about luck," said Travis firmly. "In the
future, sons, put your shoulders to the wheel...."

But the attention of the two was already wandering. They were both
beginning to gaze once more upon the lovely Navel, who was quite shyly
but very womanly gazing back. He saw Trippe look at Dahlinger,
Dahlinger glare at Trippe, their hackles rising. He looked down at
Navel in alarm.

Born to cause t