Paul sat back in his chair with the first feeling of returning self-confidence that he had enjoyed since the moment of his downfall in the lecture hall. "Hoagland," he said, "you've made me very happy." "How?" snapped the other. "I've always had the conviction that God was a swell Fellow, Who like the rest of us, was still seeking the completely Holy Truth. But happy, understand, in knowing that He did not really know everything because when He did there was no more future, for Him, for us, for anybody. Equally less-than-perfect is the Devil, who does not know everything either. Hoagland, you're just a minor devil." "What do you mean?" "There was a guy on Proxima about to impersonate me--or maybe impersonate the impersonation you provided. I can see one faction bumping off parties of the second part. But Hoagland, old devil, if you don't know about the mess on Proxima, you don't know that instead of one conflicting faction against you, you've got two! "Because the guy you did not know about was polished off by another gang that you do not know about! How do you like them apples?" Hoagland blew out a breath that sounded like the sigh of Autumn. CHAPTER 11 Considering that the time elapsed between Paul's first contact with Nora Phillips and his meeting with Hoagland was less than one month, during which Paul lived in an incomprehensible maelstrom, the following ten months were sheer boredom. For Paul was removed from 7111 Bridge Street and taken aboard a spacecraft bound for Neoterra, one hundred and forty light years by distance and three hundred and eighteen days by the fastest spaceliner going. Ten months plus, spent in a shell of metal, completely self-contained. There were no viewports for a ship exceeding the speed of light was enclosed in its own warp of space and one could not see out. There was a broad port-dome for the landing and take-off pilot, but looking out through that dome of glass into the awesome nothingness of supervelocity made men a little bit crazy. Some went stark mad. Time was measured by ship's clocks and ship's calendars, timed in divide-down networks from the master micro-timer that measured the flight-time in microseconds from the moment of superdrive until the end of the flight. Paul had a lot of time to think, but nothing to do. Eventually Paul knew that thinking supplied nothing but additional complications introduced by his own mind. By the time the trip was half over, the network of fact and fiction revolving around Nora Phillips was so involved that any single additional fact would have destroyed the whole picture. Nora was either angel or she-devil.