"And what?" asked the Director, sarcastically. "You don't think I'd risk a billion credits worth of equipment on a wild-goose chase like that, do you? We could use up a year's appropriation of fuel and manpower and still be unable to adequately search a sector one-tenth that size. If he just sat still, a thousand ships couldn't find him in a thousand years, searching at finite speeds. Add to that the fact that the target is moving at ultra-light speed and the odds against locating him is multiplied by a billion." "I know, but he can't stay in space. He'll have to land somewhere, sometime." "True enough--but where and when?" "Couldn't we alert all the nearby planets?" "You know better than that. He could be halfway across the galaxy before an ethero-gram reached the nearest planet." "Suppose we sent scout ships to the nearer planets and asked them to inform their neighbors in the same way. We'd soon have an expanding circle that he _couldn't_ slip through." The Director smiled wryly. "Maybe. But who's going to pay for all this. By the time the circle was a thousand light-years in diameter there would be ten thousand ships and a million clerks working on recapturing one escaped prisoner. Another thing; I don't know offhand what he's been sentenced for, but I'll wager there are ten thousand planets on which his crime would not be a crime. Do you think we could ever extradite him from such a planet? And even if by some incredible stroke of fortune one of our agents happened to land on the right planet, in which city would he begin his search. Or suppose our quarry lands only on uninhabited planets? We can't very well alert the whole galaxy in the search for just one man." "I know, but--" "But what?" interrupted the Director. "Any other suggestions?" "N ... no--" "All right, he asked for it. You have the pattern, I presume. _Feed it to Fido!_" "Yes, sir, but well ... I just don't--" "Do you think _I_ like it?" asked the Director, fiercely. In the silence that followed, they looked at each other, guiltily. "There's nothing else we can do," said the Director. "The orders are explicit. _No one escapes from Hades!_" "I know," replied the biophysicist. "I'm not blaming you. Only I wish someone else had my job." "Well," said the Director, heavily. "You might as well get started." He nodded his head in dismissal. As the biophysicist went out the door, the Director looked down once more at the pile of papers before him. He pulled the top sheet closer, and rubber-stamped across its face--CASE CLOSED. "Yes," he mused aloud. "Closed for us, but--" He hesitated a moment, and then sighing once more, signed his name in the space provided. * * * * * AUGUST 6, 430th Year GALACTIC ERA