So I put on my dress uniform the next day, and made sure that nothing could be deader than the dulled bits, or brighter than the polished ones. A bit of this effort was wasted since I arrived at Headquarters looking something less than sharp. The cooling unit in my armor was acting up a bit; and, also, three Terran city guerillas had tried to ambush me on the way. You take quite a jolt from a land mine, even with armor set on maximum. Some of those people never knew when they were licked. No wonder their Spanglt Resistance Quotient was close to the highest on record. I got through the three lines of guards and protective force fields all right, checking my rayer here, my armor there--the usual dull procedure. By the time I reached the Admissions Officer I was down to uniform and medals. "You want to see the Accountant?" the Admissions Officer asked incredulously. "You mean one of his staff! Well, where's your request slip, Trontar?" "I've come on my own, Sir," I said, "not from my office, so I haven't a request slip." "Come on your own? What's your unit? Give me your ID card!" Let's see, I thought, I've abstracted classified material from the files and carried it outside the office, I've broken the chain of command and communication, and, worst of all, I'd tried to see a senior officer without a request slip. Yeah, maybe I'd be lucky to end up as a _live_ deckhand on a space freighter. A bored young Zankor with the rarely-seen balance insignia of the Accountant's Office rose from behind the Admissions Officer. "I'll take responsibility for this man," he said casually to the A.O. "Follow me, Trontar. I was wondering when you'd turn up." "Me?" "Well, someone like you. Though usually it's scared sub-clerks that we drag up. And that reminds me." He turned to another young and equally bored Zankor standing nearby. "Take over, Smit, will you? They're bringing in that sub-clerk who's been writing those anonymous letters. I've reserved the Inquisition Room for a couple of hours for him." I followed the Zankor as he strode away, wondering as I did if they had more than one Inquisition Room. He led me into a small room just off the corridor and motioned me to a chair. "Before you see the Accountant, Trontar," he said, "I'll have to screen what you have. It may be that we won't have to bother the Accountant at all." * * * * * The smooth way the Zankor talked and his friendly manner almost convinced me that we should both put the interests of the Accountant first. But then it occurred to me that a man with the gold knot of a Zankor on his collar wasn't often friendly with a mere Trontar. That thought snapped me out of it and I knew I should only give the minimums. "I've got documents," I said--"document" is such a lovely strong word, "which prove that the official report on the invasion and occupation of this planet is false." That, I thought, was as minimum as one could get.