A cold feeling settled in the pit of Durham's stomach. _There's somebody else, Lloyd, who wanted you to have another chance._ Fatherly intuition? Or a big fat lie? Let's face it, Durham, why would Hawtree send you on a mission to the dog pound? There are ten billion people on The Hub. He could have found somebody else. The whole business smells. It reeks. But wait. Suppose he sent Susan here to test me; to see if I'd talk? Not too believable, but a pleasanter belief than the alternative. Let's see. "Susan. Look, I can say this now because I'm going home and that's the end of it. We won't see each other any more. I should never have got engaged to Willa, I didn't love her. It was you all the time." He caught the quick glint of tears in her eyes and was appalled. Tears for him? From Susan Hawtree? "That's why I went with you that night," she whispered. "I thought I could take you from her. I thought I could make you be what you ought to be--oh, damn you, Lloyd, I should never have come here!" She jumped up and walked rapidly away from the table. He followed her, with his eyes and his mouth both wide open and something very strange happening inside him. One thing sure. She was no plant. "Susan." "Don't you have to get aboard, or something?" "Yes, but--Susan, ride down with me, I want to talk to you." "There's nothing to talk about." But she went to the stairwalk with him, and rode down, her face turned away and her head held so high she seemed to tower over him. "Susan," he said. "Do you think--could you give me--" No, that's not the gambit. But what do you say--Susan, I'm a changed man. Susan, wait for me? The stairwalk slid them gently off onto a very long platform. There was a crowd on it, sorting itself into the endless lines of purple monorail taxis that moved along both sides. "Susan." "Good-bye, Lloyd." "No, wait a minute. Please. I don't know quite how--" Suddenly they were not alone. A young couple had joined them. The color of their skin had changed from pale green to a warm burnt orange, and their clothing was different, but Durham recognized them without difficulty. A hard object prodded him in the side, and the young man, smiling, said to him, "Get into that cab." The young woman, also smiling, said to Susan Hawtree, "Don't scream. Keep perfectly quiet." Susan's face went white. She looked at Durham, and Durham said to the young man, "Let her go, she has nothing to do with this!" "Get in the cab," said the young man. "Both of you." "I think," said Susan, "we'd better do it." They got in. The doors closed automatically behind them. The young man, with his free hand, took out a ticket and laid it in the scanner slot, with the code number of the ship's docking area uppermost. The taxi clicked, hummed, and took off smoothly. Durham saw the ticket as the young man removed it from the scanner. It was a passage to Nanta Dik aboard the freighter _Margaretta K_. IV