days. Liaison Research learned how to speed it up with
equipment but they never have learned just what they're working with."
He smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid that doesn't help you a bit but
there's nothing much more I can say that will give you a clearer
picture. I've tried before."

Thane was then in his own normal: black hair and eyes, somewhat over
two meters in height, with the heavily tanned Proxima skin. Before
sliding on the table he took a sheet from the medic and glanced over
his new specifications: yellow eyes, golden hair, golden skin. Slight
slant to eyes. Three centimeters height reduction. All routine
changes, and a matter of a few minutes, with the aid of the Liaison
equipment.

The medic was busy making connections, giving injections and setting
dials. Thane looked up at the brightly lighted ceiling. With no
perceptible lapse he was still staring at it when the medic began
taking off the connections. But in the zero subjective time, the
twelve minutes of elapsed time, Thane had changed his appearance
completely. And what he had learned puzzled him at first and then
angered him.

"Roger Thane," the sleep-record began, "your assignment is the
protection of Dr. Manning Reine...."

Reine, he learned, was one of the scientists who had been working in
obscure laboratories on the Forsberg Project. Forsberg's mathematics
had shown the theoretical possibility of a discreet jump, with no time
lapse, from one of the curving lines of warp to the next, instead of
the present method of travel at "friction speed" along the erratically
curving lines.

Garth's voice cut in on the speech record. "Now that we have the
drive, what are we going to do with it? Politically, the Allied
Systems cannot initiate the attack. Yet if we merely wait, Darzent
will eventually learn the details of the drive. As it is, they
outnumber us, two to one. They have the advantage in almost every
respect. Their only deterrent has been the fear that we do have the
second-stage drive.

"There have already been leaks--enough so that if Manning Reine falls
into Darzent hands, they would have the drive in operation within a
few days. Then immediate attack, and defeat. Your job is to protect
Reine, or to kill him if there is danger of his loss to Darzent."

Manning Reine, a native of Onzar, had been educated at the Systems
University at Beirut, Earth. He'd returned to Onzar but had fled at
the time of the Candar revolution. On Earth, h