On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term “crackpot” which Sam had applied was hardly called for. Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip. But his heart wasn’t in it. _The Professor_, Susan had said. ------------------------------------- Before he’d gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he’d requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport. But it wasn’t the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank. Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone, “All right, who is it?” A Teutonic voice chuckled and said, “You’re going to have to decide whether or not you’re on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren’t you at work?” Larry Woolford was waking up. He said, “What can I do for you, Distelmayer?” The German merchant-of-espionage wasn’t the type to make personal calls. “Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?” the other chuckled. “It was I who was going to do you a favor.” He hesitated momentarily, before adding, “In possible return for future—” “Yeah, yeah,” Larry said. He was fully awake now. The German said slowly, “You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.” Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford’s counterpart. Hatchetman for the _Chrezvychainaya Komissiya_. Woolford had met him on occasion when they’d both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counter-espionage for their respective superiors. Blandly shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international co-existence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it’d ever come to the point where one would _blandly_ treat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon. Larry said sharply, “Where is he? How’d he get in the country?” “My friend, my friend,” the German grunted good-humoredly. “You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol’s command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think his _Komissiya_ less capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a ‘returning tourist’ from Europe?” Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now, “It’s not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we’ll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”