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glittering trail of illegal jewelry across an inland province of the southern continent.
    Wargen controlled his temper and asked for a data report on persons—missing and surplus . On his way to the port he read the tabulated facts concerning everyone on the world of Donov known to be where he wasn’t expected or known not to be where he was expected, and the sad tale of a tourist missing from a chartered tour group caught his attention. On a world specializing in tourists and vacationers, a lost tourist represented an affront to the national honor, but a smuggler eager to put distance between himself and customs officials might not be aware of that.
    Wargen caught the next rocket to Port Ornal, the southern continent’s spaceport, where he picked up the file on the missing tourist. From there he flew to the precinct capital, and a few inquiries in the role of an importer looking for outlets for hand-fashioned trinkets quickly satisfied him that the smuggler was still in the hinterland. He followed his trail posing as a tourist shopping for distinctive presents for his aging mother on the world of Lycol.
    Outsiders frequently erred in assuming that fortunes could be reaped in smuggled jewelry on a mineral-poor world where jewelry was inordinately expensive. The frugal Donovians mostly regarded such trinkets as something to be sold to tourists. They rarely purchased any, and those who did, and who wore the jewelry, were talked about. The missing tourist’s trail was as easy to follow as a wrranel stampede.
    By midafternoon Wargen had caught up with the culprit, a shabby little peddler who had somehow maneuvered false-bottom luggage through customs. Wargen dispatched an anonymous tip to the local police, waited unobtrusively until he saw the peddler arrested and his satchel confiscated as evidence, and hurried back to Port Ornal. He returned to Donov Metro on the late afternoon rocket, stopped at his office to dictate a report, and finally reached home two hours late.
    The Wargen mansion stood at the head of a small valley, and Wargen daily blessed his grandfather for having had the foresight to buy the surrounding steep hills; otherwise, their stark majesty long since would have been smeared with some alien world’s cockeyed architecture. The huge castellated building was one of the worst examples of alien excesses on Donov, but the view from within was superb. The valley mouth opened like a vast window on a breathtaking panorama of Donov Metro.
    On this evening his enjoyment of the prospect was brief. His mother greeted him coolly and asked, “How could you! On Ronony’s rev night!”
    Wargen groaned. “End of the month reports, you know. I wasn’t paying any attention to the time.”
    “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you can sit all day in that stuffy little office and not pay attention to the time. Go and get dressed.”
    Wargen groaned again. “Long trousers and sleeves, I suppose. It’s enough to make a man go asteroid hunting.”
    “You know you’ll enjoy it when you get there. And by the way, if that little Korak minx is there—”
    “Charming child, isn’t she? What about her?”
    “Nothing, Pet. Hurry and get dressed.”
    Wargen grumblingly permitted himself to be rushed into rev dress and swept off to Ronony Gynth’s, and he continued to grumble until the moment Ronony’s steward stepped forward to greet them. In actual fact he was more eager to attend than his mother was, but it would not have done at all to have her suspect that.
    All of Donov had heard of Ronony Gynth, the mystery woman. Few had ever seen her, and fewer still were aware that she headed the world’s largest and most active group of spies. Wargen was an ardent admirer of her work while at the same time taking great pains to ensure that she knew nothing of his, had no inkling at all that the charming World Manager’s First Secretary was much more than he seemed—was in fact the head of Donov’s Secret Police.
    Not even