"That is convenient. Are accommodations still available?"

"Definitely, sir, in either first or second class."

"We will want two single cabins, second-class."

"Just so. I will need three hundred sols and your identity cards."

Glawen paid over the money. The two displayed their papers and received the passage vouchers.

They moved away from the counter. Kirdy said-in a grumbling voice: "Our luggage is still at the hotel."

"Do you want to go get it?" asked Glawen.

"There is time enough^ and the bodies probably haven't been found yet."

"What about you?"

"I think I'll go aboard the ship."

Kirdy gave his head a nervous shake.

"I'll go aboard the ship too."

"Come along then ... And yet--" Glawen hesitated.

"Now what?"

"There is also time to make a telephone call."

"What of that? Who would you be calling?"

"One or another of the Ideationists. SS. Foum, for example.

I'd like to learn who brought him his ticket."

Kirdy grunted.

"Do you think he'd tell you over the telephone? He'd ask all kinds of questions, and in the end tell you nothing."

"I also could warn him of the plot, which, all in all, seems a trifle unfair."

"I never quite understood this plot," said Kirdy.

"Still, on the whole, the controversy seems none of our concern, one way or the other."

Glawen heaved a sigh.

"I must agree with you there. In fact, the longer I think on the matter, the more I agree."

"Then let's go aboard the ship."

The stars along Mircea's Wisp, for all the drama of their glittering flow, were themselves of average size and luminosity. No exception was Vergaz, the pink-white sun in the sky of Soum.

The Sagittarian Ray slanted down upon Vergaz, oriented itself first to the orbit of Soum, then to its plane of diurnal rotation, and finally landed at the Soumjiana spaceport. Cargo and passengers, including Glawen and Kirdy, were discharged, and the Sagittarian Ray went its way down the Wisp toward the terminus at Andromeda 6011IV.

At the space terminal Glawen inquired regarding connections to Tassadero by Zonk's Star, a lonely and isolated system to the side of the Wisp. He learned that a pair of small packets serviced the route:

the Camuike, leaving in four days' time, and the Kersnade, scheduled to depart in something over a month. Neither date was altogether convenient, if it became necessary to travel to Tassadero--unless the inquiries on Soum could be completed within four days. This possibility did not seem utterly remote, and Glawen reserved passage aboard the Camuike, to Kirdy's instant dissatisfaction.

"Why in blazes do you insist on this frantic haste? Do you never consider the wishes of anyone else? I say, let's work at leisure and enjoy our stay! The sausages are specially good at Soumjiana."

Glawen politely rejected Kirdy's protest.

"For all we know, time may be a critical factor in the case. If so, Bodwyn Wook would not take kindly to our loitering and eating sausages, especially at Bureau expense."

"Bah," muttered Kirdy.

"When Bodwyn Wook and I go off together, he must learn to trot along at my pace."

Glawen laughed.

"Surely you don't intend me to take you seriously."

Kirdy only grunted and watched from the corner of his eye while Glawen completed his business at the reservation counter.

While they awaited the vouchers, Kirdy asked in a silken voice:

"What if we can't finish the work in four days?"

"We'll worry about that when the time comes."

"But just suppose."

"Much would depend on circumstances."

"I see."

The time was midmorning. Glawen and Kirdy rode into Soumjiana by elevated transit car, through a district of industrial facilities and small workshops, uniformly fabricated of foamed glass, stained pale blue, watery green, pink or occasionally a pallid lemon yellow. To right and left the city spread away across a flat plain, accented only by lines of slim black trees which marked the routes of important boulevards.

In geological terms, Soum was an old world. The mountains had long been worn down to nubbins; innumerable small rivers wandered this way and that across the land; the seven seas knew only the most lackadaisical storms.

The Soumians, like their world, were of a mild and equable temperament. A certain school of sociologists, calling themselves the Circumstantial Determinists maintained that the placid environment had shaped the psyche of the Soumians. Another group, who called themselves merely sociologists, pronounced the theory "arrant mysticism and total nonsense." They pointed out that over the centuries folk of a hundred different racial stocks had come as immigrants of Soum, each necessarily adapting to the customs of all the others and in the process learning tolerance and compromise: faculties now integral with the Soumian personality. Women and men enjoyed equal status and tended to dress alike; there was little mystery or glamour to sexuality. Such being the case, sex crimes were uncommon, along with fits of

murderous jealousy, while grand amours and romantic adventures were little more than the subject of wistful speculation unless one could afford services like those offered by Ogmo Enterprises in the Perfection of Joy brochures.

Arriving at the center of Soumjiana, Glawen and Kirdy took lodging at the Travelers Inn, overlooking the Octacle, as the great eight-sided central plaza was known.

Kirdy seemed restless and somewhat out of sorts. Glawen took time to explain his plans in detail.