being shepherded by their tour-conductors toward some old monuments at the far end of the spaceport. But he had no desire to follow them.

The psychotherapist had told him, "Live as nearly an ordinary Earth life as you can. Your cure will be quicker if you do. Best thing would be to lodge in some typical Earth home, if you can."

Carlin wondered where he could find such a lodging. There were a few Earthmen about, spacemen, port officials and the like. He could ask one of them.

He had met Earthmen before throughout the galaxy, for many of them followed space as a trade. And he didn't much like them. A proud, taciturn, half-sulky lot, they had always seemed to him.

"Can you tell me where I could find lodgings around here?" He asked a lanky, lantern-jawed man in faded clothes.

The Earthman contemplated Laird Carlin with unfriendly eyes, taking in his sun-darkened face, his pearl-colored synthesilk slacks and jacket, every detail of his appearance that was alien here.

"Well, no," the fellow drawled coolly. "Don't know where a stranger could get lodgin's round here."

He slouched on. Carlin flushed with anger at the scarcely veiled hostility in the fellow's manner.

These blasted yokels of Earth! Living here on an old, outworn, fifth-rate planet, resenting the progress and prosperity of the great star-worlds, talking of everybody but themselves as "strangers"!

"And I'm supposed to live among them for a year!" he thought bitterly.

He started across the spaceport. He had noted a spick-and-span chromaloy building with a half-dozen trim Control cruisers parked nearby, and with the Control Council emblem on its wall. He could find out something there.

The spaceport was a somnolent, slovenly place to Carlin's eyes. A few star-ships, all of them freighters except the tubby "Larkoom," a scattering of little inter-planet craft, a few workers lounging about. Even the smallest world of the great stars would be ashamed of such a port.

That soft yellow sun, he found, had a deceptive warmth. And walking was tiring after days of the ship's artificial gravity. Then Carlin stopped as he came abreast of a rickety little planet-ship.

Two Earthmen were inspecting its stern 

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