ht I'd visit the Southwest. Get in some mountain climbing, see
the canyons and Indian ruins and--"

"Yes, yes. Very well. You'll get your ticket as usual and a reservation
at the Tycho Hotel in Phoenix. You'll go there and, on your first
evening, retire early. Alone, I need hardly add. We'll be waiting for
you in your room. There'll be a very carefully prepared
duplicate--surgical disguise, plastic fingerprinting tips, fully
educated in your habits, tastes, and mannerisms. He'll stay behind and
carry out your vacation while we smuggle you away. A similar exchange
will be affected when you return, you'll be told exactly how your double
spent the summer, and you'll resume your ordinary life."

"Ummm--well--" It was too sudden. Lancaster had to hedge. "But
look--I'll be supposedly coming back from an outdoor vacation, with a
suntan and well rested. Somebody's going to get suspicious."

"There'll be sun lamps where you're going, my friend. And I think the
chance to work independently on something that really interests you will
prove every bit as restful to your nerves as a summer's travel. I know
the scientific mentality." Berg chuckled. "Yes, indeed."

* * * * *

The exchange went off so smoothly that it was robbed of all melodrama,
though Lancaster had an unexpectedly eerie moment when he confronted his
double. It was his own face that looked at him, there in the impersonal
hotel room, himself framed against blowing curtains and darkness of
night. Then Berg gestured him to follow and they went down a cord ladder
hanging from the window sill. A car waited in the alley below and slid
into easy motion the instant they had gotten inside.

There was a driver and another man in the front seat, both shadows
against the moving blur of street lamps and night. Berg and Lancaster
sat in the rear, and the secret agent chatted all the way. But he said
nothing of informational content.

When the highway had taken them well into the loneliness of the desert,
the car turned off it, bumped along a miserable dirt track until it had
crossed a ridge, and slowed before a giant transcontinental dieselectric
truck. A man emerged from its cab, waving an unhurried arm, and the car
swung around to the rear of the van. There was a tailgate lowered,
forming a ramp; above it, the huge double doors opened on a cavern of
blackness. The car slid up the ramp, and the man outside pushed it in
after them and closed the