"Planetarized the Transfer Service!" gasped Ramsey in surprise. He knew the Irwadians had been contemplating the move in theory for many years, but he also knew that transferring a starship from normal space through hyper-space back to normal space again was a tremendously difficult and technical task. He doubted if half a dozen Irwadians had mastered it, yet the Irwadi branch of Interstellar Transfer Service was made up of seventy-five hyper-space pilots of divers planetalities. "Ecthactly," said the Security Officer, as amused as an Irwadian could be by the amazement in Ramsey's frank green eyes. "Tho if you will kindly thurrender your permit?" "Let's see it in writing, huh?" The Security Officer complied. Ramsey read the official document, scowled, and handed over his Irwadi pilot license. "What about the _Polaris_?" he wanted to know. The _Polaris_ was a Centaurian ship he'd been scheduled to take through hyper-space on the run from Irwadi to Centauri III. "Temporarily grounded, captain. Or should I thay, ecth-captain?" "Temporarily my foot," said Ramsey. "It'll be months before you Irwadians can get even a fraction of the ships into hyper. You must be out of your minds." "Our problem, captain. Not yourth." That was true enough. Ramsey shrugged. "Your problem," the Security Officer went on blandly, "will be to find a meanth of thelf-thupport until you and all other ecthra-planetarieth can be removed from Irwadi. We owe you ecthra-planetarieth nothing. Ethpect no charity from uth." Ramsey shrugged. Like all extra-planetaries on a bleak, friendless world like Irwadi, he'd regularly gambled away and drank away his monthly paycheck in the interstellar settlement which the Irwadians had established in the Old Quarter of Irwadi City. But last month he'd managed to come out even at the gaming tables, so he had a few hundred credits to his name. That would be enough, he told himself, to tide him over until Interstellar Transfer Service came to the rescue of its stranded pilots. Ramsey went up the gangway and got his gear from the _Polaris_. When he returned down the gangway, the late afternoon wind was blowing across the spacefield tarmac, a wet, bone-chilling wind which only the reptile-humanoid Irwadians didn't seem to mind. Ramsey fastened the toggles of his cold-weather cape, put his head down and hunched his shoulders, and walked into the teeth of the wind. He did not look back at the _Polaris_, marooned indefinitely on Irwadi despite anything the Centaurian owners or anyone else for that matter could do about it. * * * * *