hips and stared at him questioningly.

"Big stakes," said Sy with meaning. He rattled on with a patter of propaganda tailored for possible ears in the walls. He grinned at her obvious relief when he silently indicated a comfortable room for her private bedchamber. When at last they were outdoors, Sy ignored the ground vehicle at his disposal and led Arna along a winding, tree-lined roadway which led to the cavernous hangars. Once out of earshot of the buildings, he spoke abruptly: "They kill your escort?"

Arna looked surprised, then laughed throatily. "Poor Sy—always worrying about our personnel!" Her voice was soothing and melodious. "The other ships were dummies; Mek Enj rigged up a neat little auto-tronic device, tuned to the Needle's controls. After your message for aid came to young Tel, I played meteor through half the galaxy, trying to get picked up!" She smiled at him. "Anyway, here I am. Have you run into trouble?"

He slipped an arm about her waist. "Sure have. I missed you like the devil."

Arna's smile faded. She slipped out of his embrace. "Sy! Do you mean to say you risked exposure of the only Sur-Malic-type telepath that young Tel can receive, when you didn't need help?"

Sy evaded the question. "Tomorrow we can shoot over to Haldane," he suggested. "There's an old Earth clergyman there who got stranded when the Alliance broke off chummy relations with Leaguers."

Arna eyed him icily. "And why should we visit this clergyman?"

"Well," said Sy innocently, "the old guy's almost two hundred now, which is crowding the limit for his generation. And you know the Sur-Malic don't have any marriage cere—"

"Oh, you knobhead! Here you have the most critical job of anyone in the League, and—and—who said I was going to marry you, anyway?"

"I did," returned Sy promptly. "Remember? I've been telling you that since we were kids—and you never once denied it."

Arna made a sound that was partly a sob and partly a laugh. She shook her head unbelievingly. "With the fate of a galaxy depending on your abilities and judgment, you drag me across a thousand million miles of space to prate about marriage."

"Yes," admitted Sy, "but think of how far it might have been. If spatial distances were actually as great as the old astronomers used to think, before they learned that light slows down 

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