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SELIM JUNZ had never been the phleg to improve that He could not sip wine carefully while hisfoundations In short, he was not Ludigan Abel

And when Junz had done with his angry shouting that on no account was Sark to be allowed freedoardless of the condition of Trantor&039;s espionage network, Abel ht here, Doctor"

Junz said freezingly, "I have better things to do"

Abel said, "No doubt,blasted to death, Sark reat possibility that soht is over Let us wait a night then and see what coainst inaction caligent air of indifference, was suddenly hard of hearing Junz was escorted with firm courtesy to a chamber

In bed, he stared at the faintly lulowed a moderately skillful copy of Lenhaden&039;s "Battle of the Arcturian Moons") and kneould not sleep Then he caught one whiff, a faint one, of the gas, somnin, and was asleep before he could catch another Five minutes later, when a forced draft swept the rooh had been adht hours

He akened in the cold half-light of dawn He blinked up at Abel

"What time is it?" he asked

"Six"

"Great Space" He looked about and thrust his bony legs out from under the sheet "You&039;re up early"

"I haven&039;t slept"

"What?"

"I feel the lack, believe me I don&039;t respond to antisoer"

Junz murmured, "If you will allowpreparations for the day took scarcelythe belt about his tunic and adjusting the neto-seam

"Well?" he asked "Surely you don&039;t wake through the night and rouseto tell ht" Abel sat down on the bed vacated by Junz and threw his head back in a laugh It was high-pitched and rather subdued His teeth showed, their strong, faintly yellow plastic incongruous against his shrunken gu your pardon, Junz," he said "I aed wakefulness has htheaded I aler man"

Junz said, with a flavor of sarcasm not entirely unot the Spatio-analyst after all?"

"No, they do I&039;m sorry but they do I&039;m afraid that my amusement is due entirely to the fact that our nets are intact"

Junz would have liked to say, "Damn your nets," but refrained Abel went on, "There is no doubt they knew Khorov was one of our agents They may know of others on Florina Those are small fry The Sarkites knew that and never felt it worth while to do more than hold them under observation"

"They killed one," Junz pointed out

"They did not," retorted Abel "It was one of the Spatioanalyst&039;s own couise who used the blaster"

Junz stared "I don&039;t understand"

"It&039;s a rather complicated story Won&039;t you join me at breakfast? I need food badly"

Over the coffee, Abel told the story of the last thirty-six hours Junz was stunned He put down his own coffee cup, half full, and returned to it nothem to have stoay on that ship of all ships, the fact still reht not have been detected If you send men to meet that ship as it lands-"

"Bah You know better than that No modem ship could fail to detect the presence of excess body heat"

"It ht have been overlooked Instruments may be infallible butLook here At the very ti Sark, there are reports of excellent reliability that the Squire of Fife is in conference with the other Great Squires These intercontinental conferences are spaced as widely as the stars of the Galaxy Coincidence?"

"An intercontinental conference over a Spatio-analyst?"

"An unimportant subject in itself, yes But we havefor him for nearly a year with remarkable pertinacity"

"Not the ISB," insisted Junz "Myself I&039;ve been working in almost an unofficial manner"

"The Squires don&039;t know that and wouldn&039;t believe it if you told them Then, too, Trantor has been interested"

"At ain they don&039;t know that and wouldn&039;t believe it"

Junz stood up and his chair moved automatically away from the table Hands firmly interlocked behind his back, he strode the carpet Up and back Up and back At intervals he glanced harshly at Abel

Abel turned unemotionally to a second cup of coffee

Junz said, "How do you know all this?"

"All what?"

"Everything How and when the Spatio-analyst stoay How and in whatcapture Is it your purpose to deceive me?"

"My dear Dr Junz"

"You ad for the Spatioanalyst independently of myself You saw to it that I was safely out of the way last night, leaving nothing to chance" Junz remembered, suddenly, that whiff of soht, Doctor, in constant coents What I did and what I learned co of, shall we say, classified material You had to be out of the way, and yet safe What I have told you just now I learned froht"

"To learn what you did you would need spies in the Sarkite government itself"

"Well, naturally"

Junz whirled on the a? To be sure, Sark is proverbial for the stability of its governh since even the poorest Sarkite is an aristocrat in comparison with Florinians and can consider hi class

"Consider, though, that Sark is not the world of billionaires most of the Galaxy thinks it is A year&039;s residence hty per cent of its poprilation has its living standard at a par with that of other worlds and not her than the standard of Florina itself There will always be a certain nuer, will be sufficiently annoyed with the small fraction of the population obviously drenched in luxury to lend thereat weakness of the Sarkite government that for centuries they have associated rebellion only with Florina They have forgotten to watch over themselves"

Junz said, "These sood"

"Individually, no Collectively, they form useful tools for ourclass who have taken the lessons of the last two centuries to heart They are convinced that in the end Trantor will have established its rule over all the Galaxy, and, I believe, rightly convinced They even suspect that the final dominion may take place within their lifetimes, and they prefer to establish theria of dirt doesn&039;t remove it N~r are all its facets unrelieved dirt Consider the idealist Consider the few overnment who serve Trantor neither for money nor for promises of power but only because they honestly believe that a unified Galactic govern such a government about ~ have one such man, my best one, in Sark&039;s Depart in the Townman"

Junz said, "You said he had been captured"

"By Depsec, yes But my man is Depsec and my ~ar~" For a moment Abel frowned and turned pettish "His useful~iess will be sharply reduced after this Once he lets the Town-et away, it will mean demotion at the best and imprisorlme2t at the worst Oh well!"

"What are you planning now?"

"I scarcely know First, we must have our Towi~m~n I am sure of him only to the point of arrival at the spaceport What happens thereafter" Abel shrugged, and his olil, yellowish skin stretched parchmentlike over his cheekbones

Then he added, "The Squires will be waiting for the Town-man as well They are under the impression they have fiiin, and until one or the other of us has hi tnore can happen"

But that staten ehts over the immediate areas of their location Generally this a &039;~or~ than a pious wish, except where the strength of the home p1anet enforced respect In actual practice it meant that O~ly Trantor could truly rounds of the Trantorian Embassy covered ~ear1y a square nia ht enter ~ut on invitation, and no armed Sarkite on any account To 1e ~ure, the sum of Trantorian le Sarkite ariment for not more than two or three hours, but behind the sht of a million worlds

It remained inviolate

It could even maintain direct material coh Sarkite ports of entry or debarkation Fro just outside the hundred-mile limit that marked off the boundary between "planetary space" and "free space," syro-ships, vane-equipped for ate and needle down (half coasting, half driven) to the srounds

The gyro-ship which now appeared over the embassy port, however, was neither scheduled nor Trantorian The ht quickly and truculently into play A needle-cannon lifted its puckered muzzle into the air Force screens went up

Radioed es whipped back and forth Stubborn words rode the iitated ones slipped down

Lieutenant Camrum turned away from the instrument and said, "I don&039;t know He claims he&039;ll be shot out of the sky in two minutes if we don&039;t let him down He claims sanctuary"