"You're crazy," declared the old man. "I remember--" Cassal didn't wait to find out what it was he remembered. An impossible land, perhaps, a planet which swings in perfect orbit around an ideal sun. A continent which reared a purple mountain range to hold up a honey sky. People with whom anyone could relax easily and without worry or anxiety. In short, his own native world from which, at night, all the constellations were familiar. Somehow, Cassal managed to get back to his suite, tumbled wearily onto his bed. The show-down wasn't going to take place. Everyone connected with the agency--including Murra Foray--had been "stuck here" for one reason or another: no identification tab, no money, whatever it was. That was the staff of the Bureau, a pack of desperate castaways. The "philanthropy" extended to them and nobody else. They grabbed their tabs and money from the likeliest travelers, leaving them marooned here--and they in turn had to join the Bureau and use the same methods to continue their journeys through the Galaxy. It was an endless belt of stranded travelers robbing and stranding other travelers, who then had to rob and strand still others, and so on and on.... * * * * * Cassal didn't have a chance of catching up with Murra Foray. She had used the time--and Dimanche--to create her own identification tab and escape. She was going back to Kettikat, home of the Huntners, must already be light-years away. Or was she? The signs on the Bureau had just been changed. Perhaps the ship was still in the spaceport, or cruising along below the speed of light. He shrugged defeatedly. It would do him no good; he could never get on board. He got up suddenly on one elbow. He couldn't, but Manche could! Unlike his old instrument, it could operate at tremendous distances, its power no longer dependent only on his limited nervous energy. With calculated fury, he let Manche strike out into space. "There you are!" exclaimed Murra Foray. "I thought you could do it." "Did you?" he asked coldly. "Where are you now?" "Leaving the atmosphere, if you can call the stuff around this planet an atmosphere." "It's not the atmosphere that's bad," he said as nastily as he could. "It's the philanthropy." "Please don't feel that way," she appealed. "Huntners are rather unusual people, I admit, but sometimes even we need help. I had to have Dimanche and I took it." "At the risk of killing me." Her amusement was strange; it held a sort of sadness. "I didn't hurt you. I couldn't. You were too cute, like a--well, the animal native to Kettikat that would be called a teddy bear on Earth. A cute, lovable teddy bear." "Teddy bear," he repeated, really stung now. "Careful. This one may have claws." "Long claws? Long enough to reach from here to Kettikat?" She was laughing, but it sounded thin and wistful. Manche struck out at Cassal's unspoken command. The laughter was canceled.