"Yes?" I said. The face that came on the screen was one I'd never seen before. A man about my age, I thought, or maybe a few years older. His skin was tanned--whether by heredity or sunlight was hard to tell; his features were not distinctive enough to be sure. His hair was medium brown and cut rather longer than the crew cut which is common in the Belt. "I'm calling for Mr. Daniel Oak," he said in a low tenor voice. I touched the "vision" button and let the pick-up transmit my image to him. No point in playing cagy just at that time. "Speaking," I said. "You're Mr. Daniel Oak, of New York?" he asked. "That's right." "The confidential expediter?" He seemed to want to make very certain of his quarry. "That's right," I repeated. His smile was a little stiff. "My name is Venuccio, Mr. Oak; André Venuccio. I'd like to speak to you about a matter of employment." "You mean you want a job?" This is a conversational gimmick known as The Deliberate Misunderstanding, or The Innocent Needle. He twitched his head a little, which might have been a negative shake. "No, no. _I_ wish to employ _you_, Mr. Oak." "Well, I'm pretty busy right now, and I--" He cut me off with: "Mr. Oak, I have come all the way from Earth to speak to you. I assure you that this is most important. I would like very much to discuss it with you." "Well, all right. Go ahead." "Not over the phone. There is a possibility of its being tapped. I would like to meet you personally." I took a couple of seconds out for thought. There are a lot of places on Earth where a phone line can be tapped with fairly cheap equipment simply because, for economic reasons, the phone company hasn't installed new equipment. But on Ceres, everything goes through a synchronized random scrambler circuit, just as it does in the more modern cities on Earth. Nobody's been able to crack it yet without a good-sized computer and a lot of luck. Still-- "Very well, Mr. Venuccio; if you could be here in half an hour--" "No, no," he said quickly. "Your apartment might be bugged." He had a point there. He couldn't know that I'd already made sure that my apartment was bug-proof. A self-contained broadcaster isn't much use inside Ceres; the metal walls stop almost any radiation before it can get very far. If my place was bugged, conductors of some kind would have to be used, and I'd gone over the place thoroughly to make sure there was no such thing.