only
with the pistol that was part of his uniform and wearing a beret
instead of a helmet. He spoke to us, and ushered us down a hallway
toward Guido Fieschi's office.

I get into the spaceport administrative area about once in twenty or
so hours. Oughourlian is a somewhat less frequent visitor. The others
had never been there, and they were visibly awed by all the gleaming
glass and brightwork, and the soft lights and the thick carpets. All
Port Sandor ought to look like this, I thought. It could, and maybe
now it might, after a while.

There were six chairs in a semicircle facing Guido Fieschi's desk, and
three men sitting behind it. Fieschi, who had changed clothes and
washed since the last time I saw him, sat on the extreme right.
Captain Courtland, with his tight mouth under a gray mustache and the
quadruple row of medal ribbons on his breast, was on the left. In the
middle, the seat of honor, was Bish Ware, looking as though he were
presiding over a church council to try some rural curate for heresy.

As soon as Joe Kivelson saw him, he roared angrily:

"There's the dirty traitor who sold us out! He's the worst of the lot;
I wouldn't be surprised if--"

Bish looked at him like a bishop who has just been contradicted on a
point of doctrine by a choirboy.

"Be quiet!" he ordered. "I did not follow this man you call Ravick
here to this ... this running-hot-and-cold Paradise planet, and I did
not spend five years fraternizing with its unwashed citizenry and
creating for myself the role of town drunkard of Port Sandor, to have
him taken from me and lynched after I have arrested him. People do not
lynch my prisoners."

"And who in blazes are you?" Joe demanded.

Bish took cognizance of the question, if not the questioner.

"Tell them, if you please, Mr. Fieschi," he said.

"Well, Mr. Ware is a Terran Federation Executive Special Agent,"
Fieschi said. "Captain Courtland and I have known that for the past
five years. As far as I know, nobody else was informed of Mr. Ware's
position."

After that, you could have heard a gnat sneeze.

Everybody knows about Executive Special Agents. There are all kinds of
secret agents operating in the Federation--Army and Navy Intelligence,
police of different sorts, Colonial Office agents, private detectives,
Chartered Company agents. But there are fewer Executive Specials than
there are inhabited planets in the Federation. They rank, ex officio,
as Army generals and Space