There were skull-busting sessions with the Wesley drive, or rather with a first derivative of it, an insane-looking object which you could vaguely describe as a fan-shaped slide rule taller than a man. There were twenty-seven main tracks, analogues of the twenty-seven main geodesics of Wesley Space—whatever they were and whatever that was. Your cursor settings on the main tracks depended on a thirty-two step computation based on the apparent magnitudes of the twenty-seven nearest celestial bodies above a certain mass which varied according to yet another lengthy relationship. Then, having cleared the preliminaries out of the way, you began to solve for your actual setting on the F-T-L drive controls. Somehow he mastered it, while Haarland, driving himself harder than he drove the youth who was to be his exploring eyes and ears, coached him and cursed him and—somehow!—kept his own complicated affairs going back on Halsey’s Planet. When Ross had finally got the theory of the Wesley Drive in some kind of order in his mind, and had learned all there was to learn about the other worlds, and had cut his few important ties with Halsey’s Planet, he showed up in Haarland’s planet-based office for a final, repetitive briefing. Marconi was there. He had trouble meeting Ross’s eyes, but his handclasp was firm and his voice warmly friendly—and a little envious. “The very best, Ross,” he said. “I—I wish——” He hesitated and stammered. He said, in a flood, “Damn it, I should be going! Do a good job, Ross—and I hope you don’t hate me.” And he left while Ross, disturbed, went in to see old man Haarland. Haarland spared no time for sentiment. “You’re cleared for space flight,” he growled. “According to the visa, you’re going to Sunward—in case anyone asks you between here and the port. Actually, let’s hear where you _are_ going.” Ross said promptly, “I am going on a mission of exploration and reconnaissance. My first proposed destination is Ragansworld; second Gemser, third Azor. If I cannot make contact with any of these three planets, I will select planets at random from the master charts until I find some Wesley Drive families somewhere. The contacts for the first three planets are: On Ragansworld, Foley Associates; on Gemser, the Franklin Foundation; on Azor, Cavallo Machine Tool Company. F-T-L contacts on other planets are listed in the appendix to the master charts. The co-ordinates for Ragansworld are——” “Skip the co-ordinates,” mumbled Haarland, rubbing his eyes. “What do you do when you get in contact with a Wesley Drive family?” Ross hesitated and licked his lips. “I—well, it’s a little hard——” “Dammit,” roared Haarland, “I’ve told you a _thousand_ times——” “Yessir, I know. All I meant was I don’t exactly understand what I’m looking for.”