Farradyne sat down on the dingy bed and said, "Go ahead and talk, Clevis. I'll listen."

Clevis dug into his brief case and brought out a flower. "Do you know what this is?" he asked, handing the blossom to Farradyne.

Farradyne looked at it briefly. "It might be a gardenia but it isn't."

"How can you tell?" asked Clevis eagerly.

"Only because you wouldn't be coming halfway across Venus to bring me a gardenia. So that is a love lotus."

Clevis looked a bit disappointed. "I thought that maybe you might have some way--"

"What makes you think I'd know more than a botanist?"

Clevis smiled. "Spacemen tend to come up with some oddly interesting specks of knowledge now and then."

"So far as I know, there's only one way of telling. That's to try it out. Thanks, I'll not have my fun that way. That's one thing you can't pin on me."

"I wouldn't try. But listen, Farradyne. In the past twelve years we have carefully besmirched the names and reputations of six men, hoping that they could get on the inside. For our pains we have lost all six of them one way or another. The enemy seems to have a good espionage system. Our men roam up and down the solar system making like big time operators and get nowhere. The love-lotus operators seem to be able to tell a phony louse when they see one."

"And I'm a real louse?"

"You've a convincing record, Farradyne."

Farradyne shook his head angrily. "Not that kind," he snapped. "Your pals sloughed off my license and tossed me out on my duff to scratch, but no one ever pinned the crooked label on me and made it stick."

"Then why did they take away your license?"

"Because someone needed a goat."

"And you are innocent?"

Farradyne growled hopelessly. "All right," he said, returning to his former lethargy. "So just remember that I was acquitted, remember? Lack of evidence. But they took my license and tossed me out of space and that's as bad as a full conviction. So where am I? I'll stop beating my gums about it, Clevis."

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