"Very perceptive of you, Chind. Precisely. It was a letter. We copied it. Of course, Margot Dennison knows more than what is in the letter; the letter alludes to previous information. We need Dennison and Ramsey.

We have to let them go ahead with their plans. Then we follow them, Chind. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"You're a good policeman, Chind. The best we have, I understand. You'll be going with me--on the most important a.s.signment you or any Irwadian ever had."

"I am grateful, sir, that you consider me--"

"Now, see about that U-235 slow-implosion capsule."

"At once, sir."

Saluting smartly, Ramar Chind left Garr Symm's office. Symm smiled and sat perfectly still for some minutes. For Irwadi, yes, he was thinking.

Certainly for Irwadi. For Irwadi absolutely. To make Irwadi the most important planet in the galaxy. But important planets--in the way that Irwadi would be important--couldn't maintain the status quo. For example, Irwadi's form of government might have to be changed. At present, an autocratic bureaucracy with no one man at the top.

Ultimately, after the rediscovery of proto-man's secret--rule by one man.

Garr Symm, absolute dictator of the galaxy, if he played his hand right.

Garr Symm sat there for a long time, dreaming of power as no man before him on any world had ever dreamed of power....

Vardin rushed into the airlock of the Canopusian freighter in a state of excitement. At last they had given her something to do, and she had been successful at the outset. Specifically, Ramsey and the beautiful woman had given her a scintillation-counter and told her to prowl among the wrecks with it while they worked on the control board of the freighter, which the beautiful woman had named _Enterprise_.

"I found it!" Vardin cried. "I found it!"

She led a sceptical Margot Dennison outside while Ramsey continued working on the _Enterprise_. The two girls walked swiftly through the darkness between the wrecks. By this time they knew every foot of the Graveyard.

"There," Vardin said. "You see?"

The scintillation counter was clicking and blinking. Margot smiled and went to work with a portable mechanical arm and a leaded bottle. In ten minutes, she had the slow-implosion capsule out of the hopper of a battered old Aldebaranese cargo ship.

"I never saw one of those mechanical arms working before," Vardin said.

Margot smiled. She was delighted with the timid Vegan girl, with the cold night, with the way the wind blew across the Graveyard, with everything. They had their fuel. Tomorrow night the _Enterprise_ would be ready for its dash into hyper-s.p.a.ce. In thirty-six hours she might have her hands on the most valuable find in the history of mankind....

When they returned to the _Enterprise_, she let Ramsey kiss her and tried to slip the telepathic tentacles of her mind behind his guard--

Lewd libidinous fantasies, X stands for nothing for nothing for nothing, x.x.x--she got nowhere.

What was X? What was Ramsey's secret? Margot did not know, and wondered if she would ever find out.

She smiled, reading Vardin's mind. For Vardin was thinking: it must be so wonderful to have beauty such as she has, to melt the wills of strong handsome men such as Ramsey. It must be truly wonderful.

For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Margot Dennison would have agreed, would have delighted in her own beauty. She still did, to a point. But beyond that point, she could dream only of proto-man and his secret.

Beauty or power?

She had beauty.

She wanted power.

In the early hours of the following morning, behind the cover of what appeared to be a dense early morning fog but what actually was an artificially produced fog, a team of Irwadi technicians swarmed all over a battered Procyonian cruiser of three thousand tons. By mid-morning, working swiftly and with all the tools and spare parts they would need, they made the ship, called _Dog Star_, s.p.a.ce-worthy.

Later that day, but still two hours before nightfall, Ramar Chind arrived with a small crew of three Security Police. He had selected his men carefully: they knew how to handle a s.p.a.ceship, they knew how to fight, they were quite ruthless. He thought Garr Symm would be pleased.

Symm did not arrive until just before nightfall. He was very agitated when he came. Ramar Chind, too, was eager. What would happen within the next several hours, he realized, might be beyond his ken, but he still recognized its importance. And, being an opportunist, he would pounce on whatever he found of value to himself....

Several hours after the setting of the Irwadi primary had ushered in the cold night, Margot Dennison, Ramsey and Vardin arrived at the Graveyard and made their way at once to the _Enterprise_. They went inside swiftly and in a very few minutes prepared the thousand-tonner for blastoff.

Ramsey's mouth was dry. He could barely keep the thoughts of proto-man from his mind. If Margot read them....

"Centauri here we come," he said, just to talk.

"Centauri," said Margot.

But of course, she had another destination in mind.

Several hundred yards across the Graveyard, watching, waiting, the occupants of _Dog Star_ were armed to the teeth.

Ramsey sat at the controls. Vardin stood behind him nervously. The s.p.a.ce trip from Vega to Irwadi was probably the only one she had ever taken.

Margot sat, quite relaxed, in the co-pilot's chair.

"I still can't believe we're not going to feel anything," Vardin said in her soft, shy voice.

"Haven't you ever been through hyper-s.p.a.ce before?" Margot asked the Vegan girl.

"Just once."

"In normal s.p.a.ce," Ramsey explained, "we feel acceleration and deceleration because the increase or decrease in velocity is experienced at different micro-instants by all the cells of our body. In hyper-s.p.a.ce the velocity is felt simultaneously in all parts of the ship, including all parts of us. We become weightless, of course, but the change is instant and we feel no pressure, no pain."

Ramsey was waiting until 0134:57 on the ship chronometer. At that precise instant in time, and at that instant only, blastoff would place them on the proper hyper-s.p.a.ce orbit. And, before they could feel the mounting pressure of blastoff, the timelessness of hyper-s.p.a.ce would intervene.

"0130:15," Margot read the chronometer for Ramsey. "It won't be long now. 30:20--"

"All right," Ramsey said suddenly. "All right. I can read the chronometer."

"Why, Ramsey! I do believe you're nervous."

"Anxious, Margot. A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover.

You've got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you fifty thousand light years off course."

"So? All you'd have to do is re-enter hyper-s.p.a.ce and go back."

Ramsey shook his head. "Hyper-s.p.a.ce can only be entered from certain points in s.p.a.ce. We've never been able to figure out why."

"What certain points?"