"Oh, yes, don't let me forget to give you a communicator. A
real gizmo. About as big as a woman's vanity case. Puts you in immediate
contact with the nearest Section G office, no matter how near or far away
it is. Or, if you wish, in contact with our offices here in the Octagon.
Very neat trick."

He led Ronny from his office and down the corridors beyond to an elevator.
He said happily, "This is a crazy outfit, this Section G. You'll probably
love it. Everybody does."

-------------------------------------

Ronny learned to love Section G--in moderation.

He was initially taken aback by the existence of the organization at all.
He'd known, of course, of the Department of Justice and even of the Bureau
of Investigation, but Section G was hush-hush and not even United Planets
publications ever mentioned it.

The problems involved in remaining hush-hush weren't as great as all that.
The very magnitude of the UP which involved more than two thousand member
planets, allowed of departments and bureaus hidden away in the endless
stretches of red tape.

In fact, although Ronny Bronston had spent the better part of his life,
thus far, in studying for a place in the organization, and then working in
the Population Statistics Department for some years, he was only now
beginning to get the over-all picture of the workings of the mushrooming,
chaotic United Planets organization.

It was Earth's largest industry by far. In fact, for all practical
purposes it was her only major industry. Tourism, yes, but even that, in a
way, was related to the United Planets organization. Millions of visitors
whose ancestors had once emigrated from the mother planet, streamed back
in racial nostalgia. Streamed back to see the continents and oceans, the
Arctic and the Antarctic, the Amazon River and Mount Everest, the Sahara
and New York City, the ruins of Rome and Athens, the Vatican, the Louvre
and the Hermitage.

But the populace of Earth, in its hundreds of millions were largely
citizens of United Planets and worked in the organization and with its
auxiliaries such as the Space Forces.

Section G? To his surprise, Ronny found that Ross Metaxa's small section
of the Bureau of Investigation seemed almost as great a secret within the
Bureau as it was to the man in the street. At one period, Ronny wondered
if it were possible that this was a department which had been lost in the
wilderness of boondoggling that goes on in a