“No. The Outtime Trading Corporation has transposition facilities at Ravvanan, on the Nile, which is spatially co-existent with the city of Ghamma on the Akor-Neb Sector, where Zortan Brend is. You transpose through there, and Zortan Brend will furnish you transportation to Darsh. It’ll take you about two days, here, getting your hypno-mech indoctrinations and having your skin pigmented, and your hair turned black. I’ll notify Zortan Brend at once that you’re coming through. Is there anything special you’ll want?” “Why, I’ll want an abstract of the reports Dalla sent back to Rhogom Foundation. It’s likely that there is some clue among them as to whom her discoveries may have antagonized. I’m going to be a Venusian _zerfa_-planter, a friend of her father’s; I’ll want full hypno-mech indoctrination to enable me to play that part. And I’ll want to familiarize myself with Akor-Neb weapons and combat techniques. I think that will be all, chief.” * * * * * The last of the tall city units of Ghamma were sliding out of sight as the ship passed over them—shaft-like buildings that rose two or three thousand feet above the ground in clumps of three or four or six, one at each corner of the landing stages set in series between them. Each of these units stood in the middle of a wooded park some five miles square; no unit was much more or less than twenty miles from its nearest neighbor, and the land between was the uniform golden-brown of ripening grain, crisscrossed with the threads of irrigation canals and dotted here and there with sturdy farm-village buildings and tall, stack-like granaries. There were a few other ships in the air at the fifty-thousand-foot level, and below, swarms of small airboats darted back and forth on different levels, depending upon speed and direction. Far ahead, to the northeast, was the shimmer of the Red Sea and the hazy bulk of Asia Minor beyond. Verkan Vall—the Lord Virzal of Verkan, temporarily—stood at the glass front of the observation deck, looking down. He was a different Verkan Vall from the man who had talked with Tortha Karf in the latter’s office, two days before. The First Level cosmeticists had worked miracles upon him with their art. His skin was a soft chocolate-brown, now; his hair was jet-black, and so were his eyes. And in his subconscious mind, instantly available to consciousness, was a vast body of knowledge about conditions on the Akor-Neb sector, as well as a complete command of the local language, all hypnotically acquired.