and planets moved
around them, and double stars circled each other like waltzing couples.
There were also comets and meteors and calcium-clouds and high-energy
free nuclei, all of which acted as was appropriate for them. On some
millions of planets winds blew and various organisms practiced
photosynthesis. Waves ran across seas. Clouds formed and poured down
rain. On the relatively small number of worlds so far inhabited by
humans, people went about their business with no thought for such things
or anything not immediately affecting their lives. And the cops went
about their business.

Sergeant Madden dozed most of the first day of overdrive travel. He had
nothing urgent to do, as yet. This was only a routine trip. The
_Cerberus_ had had a breakdown in her overdrive. Commercial ships'
drives being what they were, it meant that on her emergency drive she
could only limp along at maybe eight or ten lights. Which meant years to
port, with neither food nor air for the journey. But it was not even
conceivable to rendezvous with a rescue ship in the emptiness between
stars. So the _Cerberus_ had sent a message-torp and was crawling to a
refuge-planet, more or less surveyed a hundred years before. There she
would land by emergency rockets, because her drive couldn't take the
strain. Once aground, the _Cerberus_ should wait for help. There was
nothing else to be done. But everything was nicely in hand. The squad
ship headed briskly for the planet Procyron III, and Sergeant Madden
would take the data for a proper, official, emergency-call traffic
report on the incident, and in time the _Aldeb_ would turn up and make
emergency repairs and see the _Cerberus_ out to space again and headed
for port once more.

This was absolutely all that there was to anticipate. Traffic handled
such events as a matter of course. So Sergeant Madden dozed during most
of the first day of overdrive. He reflected somnolently when awake that
it was fitting for Timmy's father to be on the job when Timmy's girl was
in difficulty, since Timmy was off somewhere else.

On the second day he conversed more or less with Patrolman Willis.
Willis was a young cop, almost as young as Timmy. He took himself very
seriously. When Sergeant Madden reached for the briefing-data, he found
it disturbed. Willis had read up on the kind of ship the _Cerberus_ was,
and on the characteristics of Procyron III as recorded a century before.
The _Cerberus_ was a semi-freighter,