"Only for a while," Herndon said. "I'll be back on Borlaam before any of you are. I have business to attend to on another world in the Rim area, and then I promise to return to Borlaam at my own expense to rejoin the retinue of the Lord Moaris." The Chief Steward grumbled and complained, but he could not find anything particularly objectionable in Herndon's intentions, and so finally he reluctantly granted the spacerogue permission to leave Lord Moaris' service temporarily. Herndon packed his court costume and clad himself in his old spacerogue garb; when the great liner ultimately put down in Danzibool Harbor on Molleccogg, Herndon was packed and ready, and he slipped off ship and into the thronged confusion of the terminal. Bollar Benjin and Heitman Oversk had instructed him most carefully on what he was to do now. He pushed his way past a file of vile-smelling lily-faced green Nnobonn and searched for a ticket-seller's window. He found one, eventually, and produced the pre-paid travel vouchers Benjin had given him. "I want a one-way passage to Vyapore," he said to the flat-featured, triple-eyed Guzmanno clerk who stared out from back of the wicker screen. "You need a visa to get to Vyapore," the clerk said. "These visas are issued at infrequent intervals to certified personages. I don't see how you--" "I have a visa," Herndon snapped, and produced it. The clerk blinked--one-two-three, in sequence--and his pale rose face flushed deep cerise. "So you do," he remarked at length. "It seems to be in order. Passage will cost you eleven hundred sixty-five stellors of the realm." "I'll take a third-class ship," Herndon said. "I have a paid voucher for such a voyage." He handed it across. The clerk studied it for a long moment, then said: "You have planned this very well. I accept the voucher. Here." Herndon found himself holding one paid passage to Vyapore aboard the freight-ship _Zalasar_. The _Zalasar_ turned out to be very little like the _Lord Nathiir_. It was an old-fashioned unitube ship that rattled when it blasted off, shivered when it translated to nullspace, and quivered all the week-long journey from Molleccogg to Vyapore. It was indeed a third-class ship. Its cargo was hardware: seventy-five thousand dry-strainers, eighty thousand pressors, sixty thousand multiple fuse-screens, guarded by a supercargo team of eight taciturn Ludvuri. Herndon was the only human aboard. Humans did not often get visas to Vyapore. They reached Vyapore seven days and a half after setting out from Molleccogg. Ground temperature as they disembarked was well over a hundred. Humidity was overpowering. Herndon knew about Vyapore: it held perhaps five hundred humans, one spaceport, infinite varieties of deadly local life, and several thousand non-humans of all descriptions, some of them hiding, some of them doing business, some of them searching for starstones. Herndon had been well briefed. He knew who his contact was, and he set about meeting him.