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expeditions were coming from, and decided to investigate. Hence our Milky Way galaxy is being invaded from outer space. Now what’s the matter?”
    Miss Schlupe had burst into wild, uncontrolled laughter. “Excuse me,” she said, raising her spectacles to dab at her eyes. “But it’s so silly! The galaxy is being invaded. That sounds like a military operation on a scale that would make World War II look like a fracas in a flowerpot. So what do they do about it? They call in a private detective!”
    “Smith couldn’t explain it, so don’t ask me to. Supreme, whoever that may be, asked for me by name, and what Supreme asks for Supreme gets. Look. Some menace from outer space, which they refer to as the Dark, is gobbling up worlds in huge gulps. They haven’t been able to figure out what it is, or how it manages to do the gobbling. That’s the job they’re handing to me. I’ll be a spy, with a very good chance of being shot at the dawning of some sun I never knew existed.”
    “Then I’ll be shot with you. It’ll be better than rusting away in my rocking chair.”
    Darzek smiled at her. “This will be a grim sort of business. I’m tempted to take you along for the laughs. I may need a few.”
    “Ha ha. I’m coming along to work.”
    “You will,” Darzek promised. “And you may not like it. We start by going to school. Before we can move freely in a strange civilization we’ll have to learn everything from the language to how to hold our teacups. It won’t be easy.”
    “Can I go back to New York before we leave?”
    “You’ll have to. If you don’t do something about your apartment, Missing Persons will be looking for you. If you don’t pack a suitcase—carefully—you may be doing some looking yourself. Macy’s won’t have any branches where we’re going.”
    “I gave up my apartment before I left, and I have a suitcase packed. Carefully. It’s in Nashville.”
    “Then why do you want to go to New York?”
    “My sister has what was left of my rhubarb beer. I want to take some along.”
    Darzek threw up his hands despairingly. “Smith, our departure will be delayed while Miss Schlupe inventories her beer.”
    Smith stepped into view and said blankly, “I don’t understand.”
    “Miss Schlupe comes with us. Her suitcase is in Nashville and her beer is in New York. A deplorable state of affairs. Get her to both places, so we can leave.”
    Smith stoically turned toward the transmitter.

Chapter 4

    They lost track of time.
    Day and night were meaningless in the unending light of the softly glowing walls that enclosed them. Hours became a dubious subdivision of a temporal reference that no longer existed. Their watches ran down and were packed away.
    They slept when tired. They ate perfunctorily when hungry from an enormous stock of canned goods that Smith had brought from Earth.
    They studied.
    Smith, displaying qualities that would have made him a creditable success as Simon Legree in a small-time stage production, tirelessly kept them at their lessons. He lashed them with words when they faltered, and, on the rare occasions when they pleased him, damned them with faint praise. (“You learn well—but so slowly!”)
    First they learned a basic interstellar language that Smith called, in all seriousness, small-talk. It was so wonderfully concise, so amazingly logical, that they would have mastered its rudiments in a sitting had it not been for the pronunciation, which was fraught with fiendish traps for the human vocal apparatus.
    They quickly achieved a measure of fluency in small-talk, though they continued to massacre its pronunciation. Then Smith introduced large-talk, and the words they already knew were revealed to them as abbreviated clues to an incredibly rich, dazzling vast panorama of expression.
    They arrived—somewhere—and transmitted from the spaceship to a sealed suite of rooms in Smith’s Certification Group Headquarters. They studied. They learned to talk, read, and