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“S

“Or put on Attached Police Service,” growled Hendricks, referring to the poor devils who, in those days, policed the air-lanes of the populated worlds, cruising over the same pitiful routes day after day, never rising beyond the fringe of the stratosphere.

“Perhaps,” suggested the level-headed Kincaide, “it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Didn’t you, say, sir, that this Inverness was rather a decent sort of chap?”

I nodded.

“Very much so. You’d scarcely take him for a scientist.”

“And our destination is—what?” asked Kincaide.

“That I don’t know. Inverness is to give us that information when he arrives, which will be very shortly, if he is on time.”

“Our destination,” said Correy, “will probably be some little ball of mud with a tricky atmosphere or some freak vegetation they want to study. I’d rather—”

A sharp rap on the door of the navigating room, where we had gathered for an informal council of war, interrupted.

“Party of three civilians at the main exit port, Port Number One, sir,” reported the sub-officer of the guard. “One sent his name: Carlos Inverness.”