Hale was a big man; his shoulders were much wider than they had any right to be, his arms were thick and cabled with muscle, and his chest was broad and deep. Most men who stand six-feet-six look lean and lanky, but Hale actually looked broad and somewhat squat. At one standard gee of acceleration--1000 cm/sec^2--he topped three hundred pounds. There was just enough fat on his body to smooth the outlines a little; his bones were big, as they had to be to anchor tendons solidly; and he had the normal complement of glands and nerves to keep the body functioning well. All the rest of him seemed to be muscle--pounds and pounds of hard, powerful muscle. His head was large in proportion; a size 8 hat would have suited him perfectly--if he'd ever troubled to buy a hat. His face was regular enough to be considered handsome, and too blocky and hard to be considered pretty. His dark hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin marked him as most likely being of late-migration Earth stock. He looked from the visiscreen to the detector plate. There wasn't a trace on it. There hadn't been for days. The skewed, almost random orbit he had taken from Bargell IV had lifted him well above the galactic plane, and he was a long way, now, from where he had started. If the yellow light from Bargell's Sun could have penetrated the heavy clouds of dust and gas that congregated at the galactic center, it would have taken it more than seventy thousand years to reach Cardigan's Green. No trace on the detector. Good. There was one advantage in stealing a fully equipped Interstellar Police ship; if his pursuers couldn't be detected on their own equipment, they couldn't detect him either--they were out of range of each other. There were certain disadvantages in stealing an IP vessel, too. If he hadn't done it, the IP wouldn't be after him; his crime on Bargell IV hadn't come under their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, stealing the ship had been the only way to leave Bargell IV. Hale shrugged mentally; it was too late to worry about such trivialities now. The empty detector plate meant something else. If there were no interstellar ships at all in the area, it was likely that the planet below was an isolated planet. There were plenty of them in the galaxy; when the infraspace drive had combined with Terrestrial overcrowding to produce the great migration, many of the pioneers had simply found themselves a planet, settled themselves into a community, dismantled their ship, and forgotten about the rest of mankind. Well, that was all to the good. At top magnification, the view-screen showed what appeared to be small villages and plowed lands, which indicated colonization. At least there would be someone around to talk to, and--maybe--a little profit to be made. But the first thing he'd have to look for was a place to hide his ship. * * * * *