say this because I like the way you plan things. And any
time I can be of service--"

"Thanks," said Hoddan, "but I'd better get going for the spaceport."
He'd write Nedda from Darth. "I'll get set for it."

He rose. The ambassador stood up too.

"I like the way you plan things," he repeated appreciatively. "We'll
check over that box."

They left the Embassy dining room together.

* * * * *

It was well after sunrise when Hoddan finished his breakfast, and the
bright and watchful new plainclothesmen were very much on the alert
outside. By this time the sunshine had lost its early ruddy tint, and
the trees about the city were vividly green, and the sky had become
appropriately blue--as the skies on all human-occupied planets are.
There was the beginning of traffic. Some was routine movement of goods
and vehicles. But some was special.

For example, the trucks which came to carry the Embassy shipment to the
spaceport. They were perfectly ordinary trucks, hired in a perfectly
ordinary way by the ambassador's secretary. They came trundling across
the square and into the Embassy gate. The ostentatiously loafing
plainclothesmen could look in and see the waiting parcels loaded on
them. The first truckload was quite unsuspicious. There was no package
in the lot which could have held a man in even the most impossibly
cramped of positions.

But the police took no chances. Ten blocks from the Embassy the cops
stopped it and verified the licenses and identities of the driver and
his helper. This was a moderately lengthy business. While it went on,
plainclothesmen worked over the packages in the truck's body and put
stethoscopes to any of more than one cubic foot capacity.

They waved the truck on. Meanwhile the second truck was loading up. And
the watching, ostensible loafers saw that nearly the last item to be put
on it was a large box which hadn't been visible before. It was carried
with some care, and it was marked fragile, and it was put into place and
wedged fast with other parcels.

The plainclothesmen looked at each other with anticipatory glee. One of
them reported the last large box with almost lyric enthusiasm. When the
second truck left the Embassy with the large box, a police truck came
innocently out of nowhere and just happened to be going the same way.
Ten blocks away, again the truck load of Embassy parcels was flagged
down and its driver's license and identity was verifie