"That's right."

"For nothing?"

"That's right."

"He was fascinated by your personal charm, I suppose?"

"That's right," said Gleed with equanimity.

"You're a liar," stated Bidworthy. "And you know you're a liar. Furthermore, you

know that I know you're a liar." He challenged the other with his eyes. "Don't you?"

"Yes, Sergeant Major," said Gleed.

"I am now going to check weapons and stores," announced Bidworthy. "If I find any gaps where you have swapped government material for this dollop of fodder you may expect the balloon to go up. The Colonel will tear off your stripes with his own two hands."

So saying, he dipped fingers into a passing sack, took out a crimson, juicy apple half the size of his head, and clanked away.

An hour later the gangway was drawn in. The airlock closed, the warning siren sounded and the ship lifted. Trooper Casartelli gazed wistfully through an observation-port as the planet shrank beneath.

"Man," he enthused, "that world has most everything: good, solid earth, sunshine, clear air, fruit and flowers. Also several millions of luscious pin-ups wearing nothing but their glorious hair. An Eden crammed with wonderful Eves."

"I didn't see any," said Trooper O'Keefe. "Did you?"

"No, unfortunately. But they're there, man, they're there."

He gave a deep sigh. "Those fellows in D Company were born lucky."

Trooper Yarrow put in with malice, "I didn't notice you falling over yourself in your haste to volunteer."

"Ruthless Rufus didn't give me the chance."

"Ha-ha," said Yarrow skeptically.

"Anyway, if I had offered my name he'd have turned me down dead flat. You know what he's like. He can smell a rat where there isn't one."

"Maybe it's just as well," opined Yarrow. "The Hygeian lovelies will fall only for a healthy mind in a healthy body. You've got neither."

"Speak for yourself, Emaciated," snapped Casartelli.

He remained watching through the port while Hygeia diminished to a tiny half-moon barely discernible alongside a blazing sun. Then he pussyfooted along to Bidworthy's little cabin and swiped that person's apple.

Chapter 7.

The next world had a sun younger and bigger than Sol. It was sixth in a family of eleven planets, had about the same size and mass as Terra. Seven tiny moons circled it closely.

Viewing it in the visiscreen, the Ambassador asked, "Which one is this?"

"Kassim," said Grayder.

"What is known about it?"

"Very little. It was confiscated by three-quarters of a million followers of a crank named Kassim who tried to unite Mohammedanism and Buddhism by claiming to be the reincarnation of the Prophet of Allah. The Moslem world gave them a rough time until they cleared out."

"They were Asiatic religious nuts, so to speak?"

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Then we know in advance what to expect. They'll insist that we wear slippers and remove them every time we cross a doorstep. They'll demand that we carry prayer-rugs with us wherever we go. Ten times a day they'll want us to prostrate ourselves and salaam to the east. They won't recognize me unless I become teetotal and wash myself only with my left hand."

"I wouldn't be surprised," admitted Grayder.

"That means I shall have to find a consul dopey enough to conform," continued the Ambassador morbidly. "I can choose for myself the world on which I shall take up residence in person. I don't fancy living among a crowd of off-beat Moslems."

"So far as our present trip is concerned, Your Excellency," said Grayder, "you have little choice left. It's either this world or the next one. Four widely spaced planets are as many as we can visit before we return to Terra for a complete overhaul."

"I know. There were only four on the list."

"Well, if none of them pleases you I'm afraid you'll have to wait until our next journey to seek one that does. I don't know when that will be. Neither do I know where we'll be going."

"Your succeeding jaunts are not for me," the Ambassador replied. "My instructions are to establish myself on one world as chief executive over the other three. Terra has a mile long line-up of consuls and ambassadors ready for other ships and other journeys. I'm stuck with this lot. Naturally, I want to select the best of the four. If the next two are even less attractive than the last two--"

"What will you do then?" inquired Grayder interestedly.

"I think I'll transfer the fellow on Hygeia and take over there myself. It would give me a definite pain in the neck but at least I'd have the consolation of knowing that the other places are worse."

"Hygeia is a paradise compared with some places I've I heard about," observed Grayder.

"I suppose so. I'll take it for lack of anything better. That is my right. I'm the senior Terran representative. The consuls are comparative juniors. A junior must suffer to qualify as a senior. I don't believe in people gaining promotion the easy way, do you, my dear Captain?"

"Certainly not," said Grayder.

He went to the control-room and took charge. Already cameras were recording the approach. Soon they began taking hemispheric pictures as the ship swung round the sunlit side and back again into the dark. Carefully the great vessel closed in, circling the world at rapidly decreasing altitude.

Land and seas expanded, revealing more and more details. Soon it could be seen that this planet was far more lush than the previous ones. The hot sun burned through thin banks of cloud upon sparkling oceans and shining rivers, cast light and shadow over huge masses of tangled vegetation.

Here and there, mostly alongside or near to rivers, were vaguely discernible clearings marked with what might be roads and buildings; the characteristic markings of humanity at work. But these areas were small and their number was few. The ship went lower while cameras continued to operate. It circled the world another ten times and then went up.

Soon afterward the Ambassador arrived in the control-room. "I've been having a look, Captain. There is an awful lot of jungle."

"Sure is, Your Excellency."

"And not much else. It surprises me. All these years and they've practically nothing to show for them. You said that three-quarters of a million came here, didn't you?"

"That is what's in the ancient records."

"Perhaps the records are unreliable. It doesn't look to me as if their total strength amounts to that many even today. They've hardly scratched the place." He took a glance through the nearest port in spite of the fact that the ship was now far too high for accurate observation. "There is something mighty peculiar about this. It isn't like Asiatics to reduce their numbers so drastically. I expected to find this world exceptionally well populated."

"So did I."

"Oh, well, well solve the mystery before long. Have you found a good landing-place, Captain?"

"Not yet, Your Excellency. I am waiting for the enlargements of our closest photographs."

"Yes, of course. You'll have to choose with great care. We cannot afford to spend weeks laboriously hacking our way to the nearest village."

He sat down and frowned thoughtfully until the photos arrived. Grayder spread them on his desk, examined them in silence one by one, passing each in turn to the Ambassador. Finally Grayder put his finger in the middle of a picture.

"Have a look at this, Your Excellency."

The Ambassador stared at the part indicated. "Hmm! Quite a large village. Not a good, sharp picture, though. It is badly blurred."

"You haven't the trained eyes for these blown-up jobs taken from directly above." Grayder pointed to a wall cabinet. "Put it in that stereoscopic viewer and have another look."

Doing as instructed, the Ambassador fitted his face into the rubber eyepiece, gazed at the scene now shown clearly in three dimensions. He let go a hoarse grunt.

"Deserted and overgrown," he reported. "All the buildings are ruins. Don't look as if they've been used for many years. No roads or paths leading anywhere. The jungle has closed in."

"That's one," said Grayder grimly. "All the others are the same." He handed across a bunch of photographs to prove it and after the Ambassador had scanned them, prompted, "Well?"

"It's sheer guesswork but it seems to me this world has been dead for at least a century. I can't see the slightest evidence of present life."

"Neither can I."

"Something must have caused it."

"Something must," agreed Grayder.

The Ambassador displayed sudden alarm. "What we have been fearing may already have happened. They've been attacked without warning and destroyed to the last man."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Any lifeform capable of extending its wars into cosmic space," said Grayder patiently, "must have a good deal of intelligence even if no morals. Intelligent people don't attack and destroy just for the hell of it. They need a motive. Usually the motive is conquest." He jerked a thumb toward the port. "If unknown aliens have wiped out every human being on that planet they'd now be in possession. And we'd see plenty of evidence of their existence." Then he added dryly, "In fact we'd be darned lucky not to be attacked ourselves."

"I can agree with your first point but not with your last," said the Ambassador. "Their war-fleet could have dumped a small number of colonists and moved on. After all, there are plenty of Terran worlds quite incapable of defending themselves against an unexpected intruder."

"Anything is possible, Your Excellency," allowed Grayder. He pointed to the photographs. "But there is not one sign of alien occupation. Moreover, it is obvious that those villages have been or are being destroyed by time and the jungle, not by warfare."

"Yes, I admit they look that way to me." The Ambassador pondered a minute, came up with another theory. "We don't know the real nature of that jungle. It isn't necessarily dangerous or menacing. On the contrary it may be crammed with food and provide perfect shelter, thus creating an irresistible temptation to revert to the apes. Perhaps they're all living in the jungle right now. Just a gang of happy animals scratching themselves, guzzling bananas and slinging the skins at each other."

"Must have taken them a long, long time to see the easy way," observed Grayder. "They did plenty of sweating before it dawned upon them that they need not bother."

"You're arguing on the assumption that religious cranks can be trusted to behave rationally," the Ambassador gave back. "But they don't. If their inspired leader orders them to clear away the jungle and build a hundred heavenly places they'll slave like maniacs to do it. Then if he gets a sudden revelation that salvation lies in everyone becoming Tarzans they'll abandon their handiwork and take to the trees. They'll squat on the branches and gibber in alphabetical order whenever he rings the bell. Ye gods, Captain, if these fellows had been halfway sane they'd never have left Terra in the first place."

"Even so, a mulish minority would have remained in their villages and kept their homes in good repair. New generations usually produce an opposition to the ways of their elders." Again he pointed to the pictures. "I don't like the complete unanimity with which they had disappeared. It looks bad to me."

"I see no point in us circling at a safe distance while we theorize about it," remarked the Ambassador. "There is nothing to stop us going down and discovering the truth for ourselves. If you can find a suitable landing-place, let's use it."

"I daren't," said Grayder.

The other stared at him in surprise. "Why not? What's to prevent us? We have definite orders to land on every planet and make a full report about it."

"That does not apply to any world actually or apparently dead," Grayder informed.

"Who says so?"

"It is a basic rule of space navigation, Your Excellency."

"Is it? That's the first I've heard of it. What is the reason?"

"The deadliest enemies of mankind are contagious diseases, especially alien ones to which we have no natural resistance. If on any planet it is found that Terran colonists have been decimated or exterminated the assumption is that a virulent germ may be responsible."

"So you think that this lot may have been wiped out by an epidemic?"

"I don't know. But I'm taking no chances. I cannot accept the risk of landing, picking up a consignment of germs and transporting them to the next world or even to Terra. I have no desire to go down in history as a bigger and better version of Typhoid Mary."

"Well, I can't say I blame you, Captain. This rule you've mentioned is a new one on me but I admit that it makes sense. The effect of it is that all ships are forbidden to land on any planet that may be riddled with disease, eh?"

"Yes."

"Which means that even the most desirable one can be banned to humanity for everlasting? And on the strength of a mere suspicion?"

"Oh, it's not as bad as that. Terra is building a special ship for remotely controlled exploration of difficult or dangerous worlds. It will be full of robotic equipment and carry a load of scientific experts. I don't know how soon it will be ready but doubtless it will be able to examine this planet and find out what went wrong."

"Well, that's a comfort," approved the Ambassador. "I don't like the idea of unsolved mysteries floating around in space, especially in the sector for which I am responsible. It's plenty bad enough to become official keeper of a cosmic mortuary; I'd like to know how many cadavers are in my charge and what made them that way."

Shelton came in and asked, "What's delaying us, Captain? Is there something wrong?"

"The place looks dead."

"Probably they've cut each other's throats," hazarded Shelton with indecent gusto.

"Oddities are capable of anything. Why don't we go down and take a look? They won't get a chance to cut ours. I'll have the men fully armed and ready."