about to find out. Call Lyllin for me and tell her I'll be along soon."

An air-car with a uniformed driver took him across the great city. It was really two cities. The older city of graceful white towers had been built long ago by the native Vegans, Lyllin's people. But then, more than a century ago, the starships had come to Vega, the first wave of explorers and colonizers from the inner galaxy. They had not been all Earthmen, even though that wave had first started from Earth. By the time they reached here, Earthmen had already mixed and mated with many other human star-folk. It was these newcomers who had built the new part of Vega Town.

It was to the newer city that the air-car took him, to the looming, dominating mass of Government house. A lift took him down from the roof, and he went through the corridors, a tall man with a faintly worried look on his copper-bronzed face. Efficient secretaries shunted him smoothly and quickly into a room few people ever entered.

It seemed a small room, to be the center of government of so many stars. For this was the center—the Sectors each had their elected legislatures but it was the Governors who wielded the power.

"Stop saluting, Kirk," said Ferdias. "You know you're at ease when you step in here."

Ferdias came around the desk. He limped, from the crash of a Class Twenty long ago. But you never remembered his limp, or how small a man he was. You saw only his face, and when you saw it you knew why, at the age of forty, he was one of the five great Governors.

"Now let's have it," he said.

Kirk let him have it, the full story of the trap in the cluster. And Ferdias' face got just a trifle longer.

He said, finally, "You had no business going in alone. But since you got out, I'm glad you did it. For I'm sure now of what I only suspected before. In his eagerness to find out how much I know, Solleremos has told me what I wanted to know."

Kirk, frankly puzzled, said, "I just don't get it. What is Ferdias planning to do about Earth? What plans would you have about it?"

Ferdias limped back to his chair, and sat down, and then looked up keenly. "Kirk, you're at least half Earth blood. Tell me, how do you feel about Earth?"

Kirk said, "But I've never been there. You know that—I was born in a transport off Arcturus, and have never been farther 

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