And that was, Cloud knew, strictly true. Passengers were not informed of such occurrences. He had been enough of an officer so that he could have learned everything if he had so wished, but not enough of one to have been informed of such matters as routine. Nor was it surprising that it had not come up in conversation. Damage to cargo meant nothing whatever to those in the liner's control room; a couple of easily-patched holes in the hull were not worth mentioning. From their standpoint the only real damage was done to the communicators, and Cloud himself had set them to rights. No, this delay was his own fault as much as anybody else's. "You won't lose anything, though," the pilot said helpfully. "It's all covered by insurance, you know." "It's not the money I'm yapping about--it's time. Those instruments and generators can't be duplicated anywhere except on Tellus, and even there it's all special-order stuff--oh, damn!" CHAPTER THREE "Clear Ether!" During the following days Tellurian Pharmaceuticals entertained Cloud. Not insistently--Graves was an expert in such matters--but simply by letting him know that the planet was his. He could do anything he pleased; he could have any number of companions to help him do it. And as a result he did--within limits--exactly what Graves wanted him to do. In spite of the fact that he did not want to enjoy life, he liked it. One evening, however, he refused to play a slot machine, explaining to his laughing companion that the laws of chance were pretty thoroughly shackled in such mechanisms--and the idle remark backfired. What was the mathematical probability that all the things that had happened to him could have happened by pure chance? That night he analyzed his data and found that the probability was an infinitesimal. And there were too many other incidents--all contributory. Six of them--seven if he counted his arm. If it had been his left arm--jet back! Since he wrote with his right hand, very few people knew that he was left-handed, and anyway, it didn't make any difference. Everybody knew that it took both hands and both feet to do what he did. Seven it was; and that made it virtually certain that accident was out. But, if he was being delayed and hampered deliberately, who was doing it, and why? It didn't make any kind of sense. Nevertheless, the idea would not down. He was a trained observer and an analyst second to none. Therefore he soon found out that he was being shadowed, but he could not get any truly significant leads. "Graves, have you got a spy-ray detector?" he asked boldly--and watchfully. The fat man did not turn a hair. "No, nobody would want to spy on me. Why?"