It was the ambulance driver. Not the one who'd driven the ambulance to the Embassy gate, but the one who should have. He was bound hand and foot and not too tightly gagged. When released he swore vividly while panting that he had been captured and bound by somebody who said he was Bron Hoddan and was in a hurry to get back to the Interstellar Embassy. There was no uproar. Those to whom Hoddan's name had meaning were struck speechless with rage. The fury of the police was even too deep for tears. But Bron Hoddan, back in the quarters assigned him in the Embassy, unloaded a dozen cooled-off stun-pistols from his pockets and sent word to the ambassador that he was back, and that the note ostensibly from Nedda had actually been a police trap. Getting ready to retire, he reviewed his situation. In some respects it was not too bad. All but Nedda's share in trying to trap him, and having a party the same night.... He stared morosely at the wall. Then he saw, very simply, that she mightn't have known even of his arrest. She lived a highly sheltered life. Her father could have had her kept completely in ignorance.... He cheered immediately. This would be his last night on Walden, if he were lucky, but vague plans already revolved in his mind. Yes.... He'd achieve splendid things, he'd grow rich, he'd come back and marry that delightful girl, Nedda, and end as a great man. Already, today, he'd done a number of things worth doing, and on the whole he'd done them well. III When dawn broke over the capital city of Walden, the sight was appropriately glamorous. There were shining towers and curving tree-bordered ways, above which innumerable small birds flew tumultuously. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by high-pitched chirpings everywhere. During the darkness there had been a deep-toned humming sound, audible all over the city. That was the landing grid in operation out at the spaceport, letting down a twenty-thousand-ton liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coalsack Stars, and if Hoddan was lucky he would be on it. But at the earliest part of the day there was only tranquillity over the city and the square and the Interstellar Embassy. At the gate of the Embassy enclosure, staff members piled up boxes and bales and parcels for transport to the spaceport and thence to destinations whose names were practically songs. There were dispatches to Delil, where the Interstellar Diplomatic Service had a sector headquarters, and there were packets of embassy-stamped invoices for Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta. There were boxes for Sind and Maja, and metal-bound cases for Kent. The early explorers of this part of the galaxy had christened huge suns for little villages and territories back on Earth--which less than one human being in ten thousand had ever seen.