nce as to Ann--another clear symptom of her emotional
unbalance.

"About Ann, Mrs. Ames," he persisted. "Do you know what clinic gave
her the commission?"

Mrs. Ames stared at him in surprise. "Ann didn't tell you in her
micropic?"

"We use a personal code," he explained. "That makes a certain type of
communication extremely difficult."

"I didn't see her, Max. After she took the commission some men came
for her things. They brought me a note from Ann, but it didn't tell me
where she was. It just authorized the men to move out her belongings."

"Is the work outside of Los Angeles? Do you know that much?"

"At first I guessed--" She broke off, biting her lip, and her face
twisted in an agony of intense feeling. "No, Max, an old woman's
guesses won't help. I can't tell you any more about it."

"I'll come out and see you this afternoon, Mrs. Ames," he promised,
"after I check in at the Roost. I want to look at that note you had
from Ann."

III

Captain Hunter left the municipal building and stood on the transit
platform. It was blazing hot in the noon sun, and he considered
chartering an autojet to the city, as he always had before. But though
a jet was faster than the monorail it was also more expensive. Acutely
mindful that he had left the service and would earn no more juicy
credit bonuses, he took the monorail instead.

He had only a ten-minute wait before a crowded car screamed to a stop
at the port station. Hunter went aboard, along with four passengers
from recent inbound flights--laboring class tourists returning from
vacations on one of the planetoid resorts. Since a majority of the
people who passed through the spaceport were executives or
professionals, they used the autojets.

Hunter's uniform set him apart. A spaceman was expected to live high,
to throw away credits like the glamor heroes on the Tri-D space
dramas.

The monorail car was crowded, primarily with afternoon-shift workers
on their way to the industrial area. They all wore on their tunics the
discs of the Union of Free Workers. The four tourists who went aboard
at the spaceport with Hunter pulled out their U.F.W. badges and pinned
them on. They belonged. Hunter didn't.

He found an empty chair at the rear of the car, beside a gaudily
attired woman, whose union disc proclaimed her a member of Local 47,
the Recreational Companion Union. What miracles we perform, Hunter
thought, with a judicial selection of innocuous words!

He gl