Her name is Ethel Brockman. I know she'll still use my name. Her address is or was East 71, North 101, Number 4. You can trace her easy if she moved. Women don't generally shove off and not leave a forwarding address. Not Ethel, at least. Craig put the battered card in his pocket and walked back through the door to the passenger room. How did you explain to an old woman why her husband deserted her fifty years before? Some kind of story about one's duty to the Universe? No, the old man had not been in Intergalactic. He had been a tramp spaceman. Well, why _had_ he left? Fifty years in space. _Fifty_ years! Zone V had been beyond anybody's imagination that long ago. He must have been in on the first Cetusian flights and shot the early landings in Cetus II. God only knew how many times he had battled Zone 111b pirates.... Damn the old man! How did one explain? * * * * * Craig descended the ramp from the huge jet and concentrated on his impressions. One day he would recall this moment, his first on the planet Terra. He tried to recall his first thrill at seeing Los Angeles, 1500 square miles of it, from the ship as it entered the atmosphere. He was about to step off the last step when a man appeared hurriedly. A rather plump man, he displayed a toothy smile on his puffy red face. "A moment, sir. Just a little greeting from the Terra. You understand, of course. Purely routine." Craig remained on the final step of the ramp, puzzled. The man turned to a companion at his right. "We can see that this gentleman has come from a long, long way off, can't we?" The other man did not look up. He was peering into what seemed to Craig to be a kind of camera. "We can allow the gentlemen to continue now, can't we? It wasn't that we believed for a minute, you understand ... purely routine." Both men were gone in an instant, leaving Craig completely bewildered. "You goin' to move on, buddy, or you want to go back?" Craig turned to face a line of his fellow passengers up the ramp behind him. "Who was that?" Craig asked. "Customs. Bet you never got such a smooth screening before, eh?" "You mean he _screened_ me? What for?" "Hard to say," the other passenger said. "You'll get used to this. They get it over with quick." Craig made his way toward the spaceport administration building. His first physical contact with Terra had passed unnoticed. "Sir! Sir!" cried a voice behind him. He wheeled to see a man walking briskly toward him. "You dropped this, sir. Quite by accident, of course." Craig examined the small object the man had given him before rushing off toward an exit. It was an empty PON tube he had just discarded. He couldn't understand why the man had bothered until he realized that the plastaloid floor of the lobby displayed not the faintest scrap of paper nor trace of dirt. * * * * *