* * * * *

"Ready?" Sria Krishna called from the controls.

Pandit had secured the crate in the cargo bay. "Ready," he responded.

Moments later acceleration thrust them back in the twin pilot seats.

Sria leveled the jet at twenty thousand and they sped at eight hundred
miles an hour toward the city and the spacefield just beyond it.

"Do you wonder about it?" Sria asked after a while.

"About what?"

"The cargo."

"We aren't supposed to."

"I know." Sria laughed. "I'm a woman, you see."

Pandit grinned at her. "Curiosity," he said. "A woman's trait on any
world."

Sria got up from the pilot chair but Pandit placed his hand on her
shoulder and gently shoved her down again. "They have a televid unit
aboard," he said, "remember?"

Sria nodded. The jet sped on.

They landed at the spacefield. They were the fourth jet down and one of
the other three had taken off on the return leg of the flight. A
Denebian Pandit had never seen before was supervising the loin-cloth
garbed laborers loading the crates aboard a Denebian spaceship. With
Sria he delivered their crate on the trundle-sled, returned with the
sled to their jet, and took off.

* * * * *

Just short of four hours from the time they started they returned to the
Empty Places. They had gained a little time and were the second team
down. From the jet ahead of them, Raj Shiva led a puny, middle-aged
co-pilot.

Orkap stood in the underground storage room. Looking at his wrist chrono
he said to the four Ophiuchans who came down the ramp: "You made fine
time." Raj Shiva's puny companion said something, but Raj Shiva grabbed
his arm and they began to load a second crate. Pandit and Sria loaded
theirs in silence.

They made their second round trip in four hours exactly. It was
completely dark when they returned to the Empty Places. Sria was worried
they would overshoot the cargo point, but Pandit brought the little jet
down within a few hundred yards of its takeoff point.

They could see nothing when they shut off the jet's running lights,
except for the glow which came from the underground room. They reached
it and went down the ramp. Pandit judged that half the crates were gone
now. He took a quick tour of the dimly-lit room while Sria got the
trundle-sled into position against one of the crates.

"Nobody here," Pandit said in a whisper. "The Denebian must be sleeping
in the sand-sled."

"Y