_Oh, yes. One more thing. Since Earth and Alpha Centauri are on a direct line from Irwadi, Centauri will do quite well as your outbound destination if for some reason you can't make Earth. Again, good luck, my child. With all my love, Dad._ Ramsey frowned at the letter. He did not know what to make of it. As far as he knew, there was no such thing as a proto-man myth in wide currency around the galaxy. He had never heard of proto-man. Unless, he thought suddenly, the dying man could have simply meant all the myths of human creation, hypothecating a first man who, somehow, had developed independently of the beasts of the field although he seemed to fit their evolutionary pattern.... But what the devil would hyper-space have to do with such a myth? Proto-man, whatever proto-man was, couldn't have lived in hyper-space. Not in that bleak, ugly, faceless infinity.... Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak, ugly, faceless infinity which made proto-man leave. "Breakfast!" the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen, and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment door irised and Margot Dennison came in. Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he'd found it, said: "Just what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?" "For your own protection, silly," Margot told him smoothly. "I always lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won't have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?" "Where'd you go?" "I don't see where that's any of your business." "Believe it or not," Ramsey said caustically, "I've seen a thousand credits before. I've turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I didn't like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it's all the same to me whether I'm on Irwadi or elsewhere." "What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?" "It means keep us informed. It means don't get uppity." Margot laughed and dropped a vidcast tape on the table in front of Ramsey. He read it and did not look up. There was a description of himself, a description of the Vegan girl, and a wanted bulletin issued on them. For assaulting the Chief of Irwadi Security, the bulletin said. For assaulting a drunken fool, Ramsey thought. "Well?" Margot asked. This morning she wore a man-tailored jumper which, Ramsey observed, clashed with the Sirian-archaic furniture. She looked cool and completely poised and no less beautiful, if less provocatively dressed, than last night. Ramsey returned question for question. "What about the ship?" "In a Spacer Graveyard, of course. There isn't a landing field on the planet we could go to." "You mean we'll take off from a Graveyard? From a junk-heap of battered old derelict ships?"