m of recruiting was a tradition too hard to
break. Earth used it as an escape valve for her troublemakers. And
since such volunteers made some of the best of all fighters, they had
already decided the outcome of more than one war. By carefully juggling
the attention given the stations, Earth could influence the battles
without seeming to do so.

The air was thick with the smell of late summer, and there was pleasure
in that, until Duke remembered the odor of Meloa, and its cause. Later
the cloying perfume of women mixed with the normal industrial odors of
the city, until his nose was overdriven to the point of cutoff. He saw
things in the shop windows that he had forgotten, but he had no desire
for them. And over everything came the incessant yammer of voices
saying nothing, radios blaring, television babbling, and vending
machines shouting.

He gave up at last and invested half his small fund in a subway. It was
equally noisy, but it took less time. Beside him, a fungoid creature
from Clovis was busy practicing silently on its speaking machine, but
nobody else seeemed to notice.

Duke's head was spinning when he reached the surface again. He stopped
to let it clear, wondering if he'd ever found this world home. It
wouldn't matter soon, though; once he was signed up at the recruiting
station, there would be no time to think.

He saw the sign, only a few blocks from where the recruiting posters
for Meloa had been so long ago. It was faded, but he could read the
lettering, and he headed for it. As he had expected, it was on a dirty
back street, where the buildings were a confusion of shipping concerns
and cheaper apartment houses.

He knew something was wrong when he was a block away. There was no
pitch being delivered by a barking machine, and no idle group watching
the recruiting efforts on the street. In fact, nobody was in front of
the vacant store that had been used, and the big posters were ripped
down.

He reached the entrance and stopped. The door was half open, but it
carried a notice that the place had been closed by order of the World
Foreign Office. Through the dirty glass, Duke could see a young man of
about twenty sitting slumped behind a battered desk.

He stepped in and the boy looked up apathetically. "You're too late,
captain. Neutrality went on hours ago when the first word came through.
Caught me just ready to ship out--after two lousy months recruiting
here, I have to be the one stranded."