nature, purpose, or extent, were to be charged to Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Graves was a grand guy.

Cloud broke loose finally, however, and went to the dock to see about storing his flitter.

It had not been unloaded. There would be a slight delay, he was informed, because of the insurance inspections necessitated by the damage—and Cloud had not known that there had been any damage! When he had found out just what that beam had done to his little ship he swore viciously and sought out the liner's Chief Pilot.

"Why didn't you tell me that that damned pirate holed us?" he demanded hotly.

"Why didn't you ask?" the officer replied, honestly surprised. "I don't suppose that it occurred to anybody—I know it didn't to me—that you might be interested."

And that was, Cloud knew, strictly true. Passengers were not informed of such occurrences. He had been enough of an officer so that he could have learned everything if he had so wished, but not enough of one to have been informed of such matters as routine. Nor was it surprising that it had not come up in conversation. Damage to cargo meant nothing whatever to those in the liner's control room; a couple of easily-patched holes in the hull were not worth mentioning. From their standpoint the only real damage was done to the communicators, and Cloud himself had set them to rights. No, this delay was his own fault as much as anybody else's.

"You won't lose anything, though," the pilot said helpfully. "It's all covered by insurance, you know."

"It's not the money I'm yapping about—it's time. Those instruments and generators can't be duplicated anywhere except on Tellus, and even there it's all special-order stuff—oh, damn!"

CHAPTER THREE

"Clear Ether!"

During the following days Tellurian Pharmaceuticals entertained Cloud. Not insistently—Graves was an expert in such matters—but simply by letting him know that the planet was his. He could do anything he pleased; he could have any number of companions to help him do it. And as a result he did—within limits—exactly what Graves wanted him to do. In spite of the fact that he did not want to enjoy life, he liked it.

One evening, however, he refused to play a slot machine, explaining to his laughing companion that the laws of chance were pretty thoroughly shackled in such mechanisms—and 

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