would take the necessary steps.

His instructions ended, "The cost of a first class ticket to Simonides
is seven hundred and fifty credits, so you should draw enough to have at
least fifteen hundred, for all needed expenses. Take the '_Hellene_'
which leaves Centropolis spaceport Friday of this week. We have good
reason to believe that certain interesting people will be aboard that
ship."

Hanlon's mind raced. Evidently someone wanted him to see what
impressions or evidence he could pick up from those suspected persons.
He grimaced as he realized the SS had left it strictly up to him to
discover who those "interesting people" were. Perhaps they looked on it
as a sort of test.

But he thrilled to the sudden awareness of what a wonderfully efficient
and competent organization the SS was--how it kept careful watch on all
its members, and assisted them in every possible manner.

He "dined" on the edible plastic sheets, then left the safety deposit
vault. He arranged for his ticket and reservations at the bank's travel
agency, then went back to his hotel to pack.

Chapter 6

So it was that early Friday morning George Hanlon, still dressed in
civvies, of course, arrived at the great passenger liner that was to
take him to far Simonides. He was thrilled with the idea of making such
a trip, for he loved the deeps of space--its immensity and its
fathomless mystery gripped him with a feeling of grandeur.

Yet he had never been far outside the Solar system. The latter was not
necessary on his training cruises, since all the details of a pilot's
job--the branch of the Service he had hoped to enter--were the same for
both inter-planetary and inter-stellar travel. It was the navigator's
job that was the harder and more complicated on the longer, faster trips
to destinations one could not see when blasting off.

This "_Hellene_" on which he was to ride was about sixty-five feet in
diameter and approximately three times that in length. The propulsion
was, the builders and engineers acknowledged, not the ultimate by any
means. They were still constantly experimenting and hoping for much
swifter travel. Still, they did pretty well.

They had some measure of anti-gravity to help lift the ship from a
planet. About 22%, Hanlon remembered. They still had to use rockets when
near a planet--but these present-day rockets were a far cry from the
early crude ones with which Snyder and his men had put first ships on
the Moon and