“This attempt on Dalla’s life occurred while the pre-mortem revels were still going on. She lived in a six-room apartment, with three servants, on one of the upper floors of a three-thousand-foot tower—Akor-Neb cities are built vertically, with considerable interval between units—and while she was at this feast, a package was delivered at the apartment, ostensibly from the Reincarnation Institute and made up to look as though it contained record tapes. One of the servants accepted it from a service employee of the apartments. The next morning, a little before noon, Dr. Harnosh of Hosh called her on the visiphone and got no answer; he then called the apartment manager, who entered the apartment. He found all three of the servants dead, from a lethal-gas bomb which had exploded when one of them had opened this package. However, Hadron Dalla had never returned to the apartment, the night before.” * * * * * Verkan Vall was sitting motionless, his face expressionless as he ran Tortha Karf’s narrative through the intricate semantic and psychological processes of the First Level mentality. The fact that Hadron Dalla had been a former wife of his had been relegated to one corner of his consciousness and contained there; it was not a fact that would, at the moment, contribute to the problem or to his treatment of it. “The package was delivered while she was at this suicide party,” he considered. “It must, therefore, have been sent by somebody who either did not know she would be out of the apartment, or who did not expect it to function until after her return. On the other hand, if her disappearance was due to hostile action, it was the work of somebody who knew she was at the feast and did not want her to reach her apartment again. This would seem to exclude the sender of the package bomb.” Tortha Karf nodded. He had reached that conclusion, himself. “Thus,” Verkan Vall continued, “if her disappearance was the work of an enemy, she must have two enemies, each working in ignorance of the other’s plans.” “What do you think she did to provoke such enmity?” “Well, of course, it just might be that Dalla’s normally complicated love-life had got a little more complicated than usual and short-circuited on her,” Verkan Vall said, out of the fullness of personal knowledge, “but I doubt that, at the moment. I would think that this affair has political implications.” “So?” Tortha Karf had not thought of politics as an explanation. He waited for Verkan Vall to elaborate.