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activated a screen.
    The face of his chief clerk appeared.
    "When the Blixo came in," said Lombar, "did it leave anyone here? Some crew member? Some base personnel?"
    The chief clerk activated his own screens. "The passenger list shows a courier returned. That catamite, Two-lah. He's right here in Palace City, once more with his lover, Lord Endow."
    "Oh, him!" said Lombar in disgust. "He wouldn't know any more than what we fed him to tell Gris. You're no help."
    "Doctor Crobe came back on an earlier freighter. I remember he got mixed up with technical and scientific circles in New York, some subjects they have on Blito-P3 called psychiatry and psychology. They couldn't figure out whether he was straight up or in suspension-was on some dope called 'LSD.' He was simply sent back to Spiteos and he's there now. If you're looking for information, Crobe might have some."
    "Oh, Crobe! To Hells with that idiot. I need a recent return. I wanted somebody who was on the Blixo, you fool. That was the last arrival. So thank you for wasting my time."
    "Wait," said the chief clerk before Hisst could turn him off. "There were two other Blixo passengers. But they were Earth people. One was an immature Earth woman named Teenie Whopper. She's right here in Palace City."
    "A young girl?" said Lombar in contempt. "She would know nothing. Who was the other one?"
    "An Earthman about thirty or thirty-two. His name is J. Walter Madison. He arrived straight up and conscious."
    "That's strange," said Lombar.
    "I thought so, too," said the chief clerk. "Ah, here's the full file. Apparently he was accompanied by a note that said he was an invaluable man. So when he landed about eight days ago, the personnel people put him into routine channels and had him hypnotrained to speak Voltarian. But meanwhile they had the credentials he had on him translated. They still don't know why he is so invaluable. The only designation they could find in his papers termed him a PR man."
    "A what?" said Lombar. "Is that some kind of an Earth race? Like Negroes?"
    "No. He's white with brown hair. Oh, here's the rest of it. From cards in his wallet, it said he was employed by 'F. F. B. O.' and was retained to do Rockecenter work."
    "Part of the Rockecenter organization!" cried Lombar. "Quick! Get that Earthman over here FAST!"
    NOW things could begin moving!
Chapter 6
    J. Walter Madison felt pretty giddy and strange. Here he was on some strange planet in a stainless steel room. It had been bad enough to sit in a detention cell at the base and realize he was a helpless prisoner. But immediately afterwards it had gotten far worse.
    Every preconception he might have had about space travel and extraterrestrials had been shattered. He had boarded a flying saucer that didn't look like a saucer but simply like an old Earth freighter whose hull went all the way around it. The crew looked like Earth people with a subtle difference that this lot was shabbier than any crew he had ever seen or heard of. They talked a language which seemed composed of vowels and consonants completely alien to any Earth alphabet, but their gestures, pointings and nods were understandable.
    When he had landed on a stormy shore with Gris from the yacht, he had begun to encounter little mysteries, but he had merely toyed with them as something amusing to occupy his mind. The shattering truth that he was in the hands of-what was the name they kept repeating? Voltarians? – hit him like a crash when they put him in a cabin, showed him how to strap himself into a gimbal bed, and then only minutes later he had looked out the port and seen Earth dwindling at such a rate below it was promptly as small as a billiard ball.
    It was all so shocking that he didn't even have time to be afraid.
    Then Teenie Whopper had walked in and said, "What a (bleeping) mess this is! Oh, wait until I get my hands on that (bleeped) Inkswitch!"
    "TEENIE!" he had cried. "We're in outer space!"
    "Where the hell did you think we were? On