people had from that day become her tools, whenever she
decided to bend them to her will.

Even earlier in her career, she had managed to put her rebellious
nature under strict control, never appearing to be a cause in herself;
never appearing as a leader among the students; merely a quiet student
intent upon the gain of knowledge and oblivious to her surroundings.

Later as she realized her abilities, she had sought council with
herself and her Buddhist ancestry, to determine what use her knowledge
should serve. And to her there was but one answer: Men were easily
enslaved by their own shortcomings; but men who were free produced
more desirable results; and if she were to use their shortcomings at
all, it must be to bend them in the path of freedom that she might be
surrounded by higher achievements rather than sheeplike activities
which she found to be repugnant.

Gradually she had achieved skill in the manipulation of people; always
towards the single self-interest of creating a better and more
pleasant world in which she herself could live.

* * * * *

In rim sector A-9, Dr. Claude Lavalle was having his troubles. Free
fall conditions that were merely inconvenient to him were proving
near-disastrous to the animals in the cages around him.

Many and various were the difficulties that he had had with animals
during his career, but never before such trifles that built _peu a
peu_--into mountains.

Claude Lavalle had originally planned to leave his stock of animals,
which contained sets of a great many of the species of the small
animals of Earth, on their own gravity-bound planet until well after
the spin supplied pseudo-gravity to the ship; but the schedule of the
shuttles' loads had proved such as to make possible the trip either
far in the future, or to put him aboard on this trip, with spin only a
few hours away.

The cages, with their loads of guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters and
other live animals to be used in the sacrificial rites of biochemical
research were, to put it mildly, a mess. Provision had been made for
feeding and watering the animals under free-fall conditions, but
keeping them sanitary was proving a near-impossible task; and though
the cages were sealed to confine the inevitable upset away from the
remainder of the lab, it was good to hear that the problem was nearly
over as the news of the imminent countdown came over the loud-speaker.

Meantime, Dr. Claude