e rest of the job. I was to keep
him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my
happiness from being complete.

I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple
terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck.
Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place.
This is a heartless world we live in.

This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since
my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.

* * * * *

And waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks,
such as ordering a Naval cruiser for my own use, and digging for more
information on the thieves, but these really were secondary to my main
purpose. Which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could go
that would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The missing
ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute the
sphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the squared
cube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations and
confined the rest within a one hundred yard radius of the ship.

There was little more information on Pepe and Angelina, they had
covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact
they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin.
There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a
happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager
findings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy
pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The
navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the
positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the
possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and
apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation
proved them all to have natural causes.

I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger
area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a
deep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. I
blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the _action
station_ alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their
business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted
off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my