Parmay resisted the impulse to pull the same gag on his wife that he had pulled on Kerrman. It might ruin an expensive research project. Alina Starrnel's blonde, closely-cropped head was bent over an array of instruments that meant almost nothing to her husband. She moved her hand over a series of switch plates and looked up at the screen facing her. The un-normal face of an alien stared out at her with its blank eyes. The fronds on the face flickered gently. Parmay watched for the better part of ten minutes as the face blurred, shifted, and underwent other strange transformations beneath Alina's manipulations of the controls. Her technicians spoke softly now and then, making small adjustments in the instruments they were controlling. Suddenly Alina slapped at the switch plates. The alien face in the screen had faded out. "Damn!" she said softly. She turned to the four technicians. "Get as much out of that as you can, though I'm pretty sure we've lost another round." "_Bong!_" said Parmay. "Round over." "Romm!" Alina turned, seeing him for the first time. "What are you doing here?" "Got bored. Decided I needed a kiss." "Well, come get it." He did. "Now," she said, "the truth. You don't come wandering down here at this time of day to neck. Out with it." "I came to take you to lunch." "At this hour? I don't usually take off this early." "My darling Alina, I have something to tell you, and I am sure that you'll need something in your stomach to brace you when I tell it." Alina put her palms to her temples and looked at the ceiling. "Oh, _no_! This is what comes of being a psych engineer! He comes in and makes a remark like that because he knows damned good and well that I would drop anything to find out what he's being so mysterious about!" She dropped her hands and looked back at Romm. "All right," she snarled in mock viciousness, "I'll come. But you can't get away with this forever!" The Colonization Program Building filled better than a cubic mile of the city's space, housing every function of the operation that was taking man to the stars, trying to get the race of man there before the aliens beat them to it. The lift shaft took Parmay and his wife up to the top level, where the apartments and restaurants were. There, they could look out through the broad windows at the rolling meadows and forest that covered the city beneath. They sat down in a booth in the main dining room and dialed a menu. "Now, bub," said Alina impatiently, "do I have to wait for food, or do you talk now?" "I talk now. Do you know the present Chief of Psychological Contact?" Alina lifted an eyebrow. "No. I never even heard of the department. What is it? Top secret, or something?" "Not particularly. I'm it." "That's nice." Parmay looked at the tips of his fingers. "Nice? Oh, yes. And on the same scale, S Doradus is a comfortable warm star." "Oh?" Alina lifted both eyebrows this time. "Why did they fire you from your old job? Did you fluff up?"