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incredibly high.
    And should he now go back and tell Raige that Lang was in her territory? If he did, he would have to admit that he had infringed the trust she placed in him by spying beyond the end of the corridor he was permitted to visit.
    His debate with himself lasted only a few tenths of a second, and ended in a way which surprised him. He started out along this other corridor toward the intersection across which Lang had passed, and when he came to the comer, he went the way Lang had gone.
    But there was no sign of Lang now. Nor of anyone else. Only a thin humming in the air, at the edge of hearing, and the reddish light and the walls with plain doors set in them at irregular intervals.
    Feeling oddly let-down, Vykor stopped. He had been screwing up his courage for a lengthy pursuit through forbidden territory; now he had no one to follow and might as well turn back right away. He stood to gain nothing much by continuing when the corridors were alike, and he risked being unable to find the elevator which would take him back to the public sectors.
    Lang must have gone into one of these rooms, though. The recognition startled him. Of course he must! This passage was cut off at the end by a blank bulkhead, not by yet another cross-running corridor.
    Vykor crept forward cautiously. There were five doors— two on the left, three on the right—between him and the end wall. He listened at the first one. Nothing. On the other side, nothing. But behind the third door, there was a queer rising and falling sound, clear in timbre, like a reed pipe, with a musical quality about it. It wasn’t music, though; it was too metronomically regular for that. Besides, at one time or another aboard ship or here at Waystation Vykor had learned to recognize the musical conventions of all the peoples of the Arm.
    It couldn’t perhaps be the music native to wherever Lang hailed from? The thought struck him in passing but was instantly dismissed. Would Lang have ventured into this area, occupied a cabin for himself, and calmly have begun to amuse himself with music, within a few hours of his arrival?
    He went on to the next cabin. Silence again. And then at the fourth, the source of the humming he had sensed rather than heard for some distance. There was machinery in there, probably something very heavy and very accurately machined revolving at a high enough speed to engender disturbances in the air.
    The last door again seemed to have no sound behind it. He had lifted his head and stepped back when it was suddenly slid aside, and a Glaithe officer in uniform was looking at him in amazement. Vykor’s heart sank.
    "What are you up to?” the officer interrogated, not seeming to be very angry. “What’s a Majko doing walking round here, anyway? Your sector is clear over the other side of Waystation, young man!”
    A bright light dawned in Vykor’s mind. Was the mystery no more than a misunderstanding? Was this secret, isolated area no more than the Glaithe’s private section of Waystation, access to which was shrouded in obscurity only because the Glaithes didn’t want strangers intruding on their living quarters? It seemed possible, and if it was in fact that simple, he had not committed as serious an offense as he had feared. His spirits rose again.
    He said humbly, "Noble sir, I have been delivering special dispatches to your distinguished Captain Raige. While I was waiting for my elevator, I saw a stranger pass who came on my ship. He claimed never to have been to Waystation before, but how could he have got into this area without knowing the secret?”
    The officer pondered. He was a little taller than Raige, but still as much smaller than Vykor as Vykor was smaller than the Pag officers. There was something almost doll-like about this man.
    “And since Raige seems interested in this stranger,” Vykor went on after a pause, reinforcing his story, “I thought I would follow him. But he has disappeared—into one of the cabins along