nightmare. I dreamed that I saw Oscar floating in space, but there was more of him. There was another similar shape attached behind him, and two smaller ones, one on either side. He was like a sort of black cross—with those horrible tassels waving at each point of it—floating along, under the stars...."

"Well," said Horitz puzzledly, "what was so horrible about that?"

"Why, I don't know," said Dr. Ilyanov. "But it was."

Horitz crumpled up his sandwich-wrappers and threw them into the waste chute. "Might as well get started again," he said. He picked up the passenger list and read, "Jaeger, Jahore, Jessamin, Johnson."

Oscar watched interestedly as the beings in the room moved about, trailing their flaming auras. These people had strange and sometimes frightening counterpoints, he thought, but they were undeniably picturesque. He would have a story to tell when he got home.

One of the creatures arose and moved across the room. Its glowing sheath was bright reeve, with radiating streaks of darker gel. Inside, the shadowy nucleus seemed to be constructed differently from the others. Oscar followed it with the waving feelers atop his own nucleus. If he could only get into syntact with that one, he thought, he might find out something about it. Perhaps it had been badly morloned when it was young; or perhaps it was a different species entirely. It was hard to see, with these people.

Two more beings came into the room, one of them tall but with a slight nucleus, shaped like the one he had just been examining. He felt it with interest, but it was as uncommunicative as the other. The figure beside it was of an uninspiring shape, but its aura was reminiscent. He recalled that something was expected of him.

Carson Jahore was a big man, with the dark skin and fair hair that characterized his race. He was saying loudly, "—I won't stand for it, d'you hear? D'you think you can drag me and my wife in here like any common suspect? I'll hear an apology, or by God, heads will roll!"

Tick-tick-tick, said the amplifier on the table.

"There's your apology," said Horitz, his eyes shining. "Where have you hidden the Equations, Ambassador Jahore?"

"What is this?" roared the ambassador. "What equations? What's that thing? Are you all mad?"

Dr. Ilyanov put a 

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