ation--or something else, something quite unthinkable at the moment
but comparable to the Federation in power and influence--wanted to keep
her here.

She uncrumpled the application, detached Rozan's note, tore up the note
and dropped its shreds into the wall disposal. That obligation was
cancelled. She didn't have any other obligations. She'd liked Holati
Tate. When all this was cleared up, she might find she still liked him.
At the moment she didn't owe him a thing.

Now. Assume they hadn't just blocked the obvious route to Manon. They
couldn't block all routes to everywhere; that was impossible. But they
could very well be watching to see that she didn't simply get up and
walk off. And they might be very well prepared to take quite direct
action to stop her from doing it.

She would, Trigger decided, leave the method she'd use to get out of the
Colonial School unobserved to the last. That shouldn't present any
serious difficulties.

Once she was outside, what would she do?

Principally, she had to buy transportation. And that--since she had no
intention of spending a few months on the trip, and since a private
citizen didn't have the ghost of a chance at squeezing aboard a
Federation packet on the Manon run--was going to be expensive. In fact,
it was likely to take the bulk of her savings. Under the circumstances,
however, expense wasn't important. If Precol refused to give her back
her job when she showed up on Manon, a number of the industrial outfits
preparing to move in as soon as the plant got its final clearance would
be very happy to have her. She'd already turned down a dozen offers at
considerably more than her present salary.

So ... she'd get off the school grounds, take a tube strip into downtown
Ceyce, step into a ComWeb booth, and call Grand Commerce transportation
for information on the earliest subspace runs to Manon.

She'd reserve a berth on the first fast boat out. In the name of--let's
see--in the name of Birna Drellgannoth, who had been a friend of hers
when they were around the age of ten. Since Manon was a Precol preserve,
she wouldn't have to meet the problem of precise personal
identification, such as one ran into when booking passage to some of the
member worlds.

The ticket office would have her thumbprints then. That was unavoidable.
But there were millions of thumbprints being deposited every hour of the
day on Maccadon. If somebody started checking for her by that method, it
sh