clearance area leaped up at them and passed into the background. They were heading into open country now.

"Whiting! Turn around. We're staying here in the clearance area!"

Whiting's foot slacked off the accelerator. The speedometer dropped to fifty. But the vehicle kept moving into open country. The man at the wheel flicked a look at Claude and smiled.

"Congratulations, Mr. Marshall," he said. "You've passed the final test."

"Test? I don't understand."

"Let me explain then," Bruce Whiting said. "In the first place my name isn't Whiting.... It's Reed—Paul Reed. I work for the government. This final test—the one you just went through—was designed to weed out any undesirables who might have slipped through our screening processes back on Earth."

"You mean this whole build up was just a test?"

The other man nodded. "We give it to every new arrival here. Now that you've passed, I'm driving you out to your homestead site."

Claude looked back at the newly-arrived spaceship and the tiny figures who were huddled at its base.

"All those people," he said. "You mean they still have to go through what we did?"

The driver shook his head.

"No. Those people are going back to Earth. You see, Mr. Marshall, those are the people who offered Leon Stubbs the bribe."

 Prev. P 18/18