o--"

"But, my dear fellow, all I meant was that, with an intelligently
coordinated theater and an intellectually adult audience, your abilities
would be recognized automatically."

"Oh," said Paul.

He was not unaware that he was being flattered, but it was so seldom
that anyone bothered to pay him any attention when he was not playing a
role that it was difficult not to succumb. "Are--are you figuring on
taking over the planet single-handed?" he asked curiously.

"Heavens, no! Talented as I am, there are limits. I don't do
the--ah--dirty work myself. I just conduct the preliminary investigation
to determine how powerful the local defenses are."

"We have hydrogen bombs," Paul said, trying to remember details of a
newspaper article he had once read in a producer's ante-room, "and
plutonium bombs and--"

"Oh, I know about all those," Ivo smiled expertly. "My job is checking
to make sure you don't have anything really dangerous."

All that night, Paul wrestled with his conscience. He knew he shouldn't
just let Ivo go on. Yet what else could he do? Go to the proper
authorities? But which authorities were the proper ones? And even if he
found them, who would believe an actor offstage, delivering such
improbable lines? He would either be laughed at or accused of being part
of a subversive plot. It might result in a lot of bad publicity which
could ruin his career.

So Paul did nothing about Ivo. He went back to the usual rounds of
agents' and producers' offices, and the knowledge of why Ivo was on
Earth got pushed farther into the back of his mind as he trudged from
interview to reading to interview.

[Illustration]

It was an exceptionally hot October--the kind of weather when sometimes
he almost lost his faith and began to wonder why he was batting his head
against a stone wall, why he didn't get a job in a department store
somewhere or teaching school. And then he thought of the applause, the
curtain calls, the dream of some day seeing his name in lights above the
title of the play--and he knew he would never give up. Quitting the
theater would be like committing suicide, for off the stage he was alive
only technically. He was good; he knew he was good, so some day, he
assured himself, he was bound to get his big break.

Toward the end of that month, it came. After the maximum three readings,
between which his hopes alternately waxed and waned, he was cast as the
male lead in _The Holiday Tree_. The produce