she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

“It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: “I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow.”

“Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help,” she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington.

Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying 58man who peered at her over his spectacles.

58

“You have the papers, eh?” he said, spying the brief case. “Good, good. Come in and we'll see what we have, eh?”

She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.

“There are things here,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. “Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?”

“I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing,” she said. “There's something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about.”

She told him about Quest.

“He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter.”

“He came back to Earth with you, eh?” asked Blessing intently.

“Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.”

Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came 

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