"Will I be able to contact you anywhere, if I learn something?" "I'll contact you, after I get settled." An hour later, Rhodes signed the Arcturan hospital release form. He signed the form with his new name, Matlin. * * * * * The Dean of the Department of Archaeology of the Junction City branch of Kedaki College entered the hospital twenty minutes after Matlin had walked out into the dazzling Denebian sunshine. The Dean, whose name was Gawroi, hardly seemed the academic type. For Gawroi was a strapping baseborn Kedaki who had done the near impossible: Gawroi had risen in life to a position of some importance among his people. He was a big fellow with enormous shoulders and an appetite for life second only to his appetite for eating. But Gawroi, for all his hedonism, was not soft. He was a hard, capable man--who passionately believed in the Kedaki doctrine of reincarnation. That Five Bureau Director, he thought with admiration. Smart. He was smart, all right. He's finally got a lead on this Earthman, Rhodes. But he doesn't send a Five Bureau Operative. Why should he? An extra-Kedakian like the plastic surgeon Quotis of Arcturus would be suspicious of a Five Bureau Operative, wouldn't he? The Kedaki Secret Police--of course he would be suspicious. But of a fellow scientist, an archaeologist? Never! Gawroi grinned in admiration, then waited until the grin vanished, waited until his big, earnest face assumed its most earnest look, and entered Quotis' office. Quotis, he observed, was a small bespectacled Arcturan with vivid orange skin. Quotis rushed around his desk, beaming, to pump Gawroi's right hand in the Earth gesture which had swept the galaxy. "Gawroi!" he exclaimed. "I've heard of you. This is a pleasure, a real pleasure." Gawroi sat down, settling down and trying to mask his impatience while Quotis talked of various discoveries in Kedaki archaeology. Quotis was a garrulous fellow, he thought. Perhaps all Arcturans were garrulous; he did not know much about Arcturans: he hardly had had any desire to study the extra-Kedaki people, any of them. "But, to your business," Quotis finally said. "I apologize, my friend. You should have stopped me. I'm sure you didn't come here to hear an old man talk." Gawroi assured him it had been a great pleasure listening, then said, "There was an Earthman co-worker of mine at the College, a bright young fellow named Rhodes--you've heard of him?" "No. Should I have?" "Mr. Rhodes has been missing since the earthquake, Dr. Quotis. He had been assigned to the College by his home office in order to make a study of extra-terrestrial penal conditions, in this case, the penal conditions here on Kedak, in Junction City. He was at the prison at the time of the quake, and since every other person there has been accounted for, living or dead, and Rhodes has not...." "Why come to me?"