official laughed and stood up. "Resignation accepted—upon completion of assignment. You're a hard case, Coran. Up to a point, you're even right. But you don't belong any more, not in this part of the universe. It took pioneers like you and Jomian to bang the holes in our fishbowl world, but we need men with dull routine minds to bring order into it. Unofficially, I'm sorry to see you go. Nowadays a man conforms or he gets out."

"Skip the bouquets and the funeral oration. What's the layout on the job you want done?"

The official threw a file card across the desk. "There's the man you want. The picture won't help you much, since he'll probably be wearing a plastic face-mask."

Coran glanced at it and shrugged. "Not much to go on. Any other leads?"

"Yes." The official glanced at his wrist-chron. "We know that he will be on the Venus transport X-1143—the Aphrodite—which leaves in three hours. Probably the woman, too. Whatever happens, they must not reach Venus alive."

Coran caught an implication in the words. "What do you mean 'Whatever happens?'"

"The Aphrodite is an emigrant ship. It's a government secret that she's carrying plutonium for the power plants on Venus, but we're afraid the information may have leaked out. You may as well know that we're on the spot. It's too late to cancel the shipment without serious economic repercussions. And we haven't found any way to protect the passenger-carrying ships. Even if we armed them, which is against Interplanetary Law, they're too slow to run and too unwieldy to maneuver. Too much mass."

"What about convoy?"

"We tried that last time. The ship was disabled and driven off-orbit. Then a group of fast cruisers of unusual design showed up. The space patrol drove them off and gave chase. It was a trick, of course, to decoy our ships into space, then the main body of pirates moved in and cleaned out the ship."

Coran laughed. "When you're catching rabbits you have to be smarter than the rabbits."

The official flushed. "We're handicapped by lack of ships and lack of competent personnel. This is your chance to be smarter than the rabbits. The man you want is obviously a member of the same group. If there is trouble, he will try to contact his friends. It's up to you to find him first, and if you fail that, to make sure that he does not 

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