es have changed, that I have mutated and therefore do not
have as an essential part of my make-up the unbelief of the
proto-man legend?_

_Good luck to you, Margot. I hope you're willing to give up your
career to carry out your dying father's wish. If you do, and if
you succeed, more power will be yours than a human being has
ever before had in the galaxy. I won't presume to tell you how
to use it._

_Oh, yes. One more thing. Since Earth and Alpha Centauri are on
a direct line from Irwadi, Centauri will do quite well as your
outbound destination if for some reason you can't make Earth.
Again, good luck, my child. With all my love, Dad._

Ramsey frowned at the letter. He did not know what to make of it. As far
as he knew, there was no such thing as a proto-man myth in wide currency
around the galaxy. He had never heard of proto-man. Unless, he thought
suddenly, the dying man could have simply meant all the myths of human
creation, hypothecating a first man who, somehow, had developed
independently of the beasts of the field although he seemed to fit their
evolutionary pattern....

But what the devil would hyper-space have to do with such a myth?
Proto-man, whatever proto-man was, couldn't have lived in hyper-space.
Not in that bleak, ugly, faceless infinity....

Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak,
ugly, faceless infinity which made proto-man leave.

"Breakfast!" the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen,
and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an
Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment
door irised and Margot Dennison came in.

Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he'd found it, said: "Just
what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?"

"For your own protection, silly," Margot told him smoothly. "I always
lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won't
have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?"

"Where'd you go?"

"I don't see where that's any of your business."

"Believe it or not," Ramsey said caustically, "I've seen a thousand
credits before. I've turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I
didn't like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it's all the same to
me whether I'm on Irwadi or elsewhere."

"What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?"

"It means keep us informed. It m