the operation was of the most absorbing interest.
He asked, "Why did you come here?"
"It seemed as though somebody ought to say good-bye."
"Who told you I was leaving?"
"I have a friend in the travel office. She tells me if anybody I know books passage home."
"Convenient."
"Yes."
The drinks came. There was a clatter of voices, speaking in a thousand tongues, laughing, crying, saying hello and good-bye and till we meet again. Susan turned her glass round and round in her fingers, and Durham watched her.
"I'm sorry, Lloyd. Sorry everything could not have turned out better."
"Yes. So am I."
"I hope you'll have better luck at home."
"Thanks."
Another silence in which Durham tried hard to figure her angle.
He said, "I heard you tried to talk your father into giving me another chance. Thanks for that."
She stared at him blankly and shook her head. "You know how Dad feels about you. I've never dared mention your name."
A cold feeling settled in the pit of Durham's stomach. There's somebody else, Lloyd, who wanted you to have another chance. Fatherly intuition?
Or a big fat lie?
Let's face it, Durham, why would Hawtree send you on a mission to the dog pound? There are ten billion people on The Hub. He could have found somebody else.
The whole business smells. It reeks.
But wait. Suppose he sent Susan here to test me; to see if I'd talk? Not too believable, but a pleasanter belief than the alternative. Let's see.
"Susan. Look, I can say this now because I'm going home and that's the end of it. We won't see each other any more. I should never have got engaged to Willa, I didn't love her. It was you all the time."
He caught the quick glint of tears in her eyes and was appalled. Tears for him? From Susan Hawtree?
"That's why I went with you that night," she whispered. "I thought I could take you from her. I thought I could make you be what you ought to be—oh, damn you, Lloyd, I should never have come here!"
She jumped up and walked rapidly away from the table. He followed her, with his eyes and his mouth both wide open and something very strange happening inside him.
One thing sure. She was no plant.
"Susan."
"Don't you have to get aboard, or something?"
"Yes, but—Susan, ride down with me, I want to talk to you."
"There's nothing to talk about."
But she went to the stairwalk with him, and rode down, her face turned away and her head held so high she seemed to tower over him.
"Susan," he said. "Do you think—could you give me—"
No, that's not the gambit. But what do you say—Susan, I'm a changed man. Susan, wait for me?
The stairwalk slid them gently off onto a very long platform. There was a crowd on it, sorting itself into the endless lines of purple monorail taxis that moved along both sides.
"Susan."
"Good-bye, Lloyd."
"No, wait a minute. Please. I don't know quite how—"
Suddenly they were not alone. A young couple had joined them. The color of their skin had changed from pale green to a warm burnt orange, and their clothing was different, but Durham recognized them without difficulty. A hard object prodded him in the side, and the young man, smiling, said to him, "Get into that cab." The young woman, also smiling, said to Susan Hawtree, "Don't scream. Keep perfectly quiet."
Susan's face went white. She looked at Durham, and Durham said to the young man, "Let her go, she has nothing to do with this!"
"Get in the cab," said the young man. "Both of you."
"I think," said Susan, "we'd better do it."
They got in. The doors closed automatically behind them. The young man, with his free hand, took out a ticket and laid it in the scanner slot, with the code number of the ship's docking area uppermost. The taxi clicked, hummed, and took off smoothly.
Durham saw the ticket as the young man removed it from the scanner. It was a passage to Nanta Dik aboard the freighter Margaretta K.
IV
The monorails came out onto the surface in bunches like very massive cables and then began to branch out, the separate "wires" of the cables eventually spreading into a network that covered the entire moon. The taxi picked up speed, clicking over points as it swerved and swung, feeling its way onto the one clear track that led where its scanner had told it to go. Durham was aware obliquely of other monorail taxis in uncountable numbers going like the devil in all directions, and of other types of machines moving below on the surface, and of mobile cranes that walked like buildings, and of a horizon filled with the upthrust noses of great ships like the towers of some fantastic city. Beside him Susan Hawtree sat, rigid and quivering, and before him on the opposite seat were the two young people with the guns.
Durham said, in a voice thick with anger and fright, "Why did you have to drag her into it?"
The man shrugged. "She is perhaps part of the conspiracy. In any case, she would have made an alarm."
"What do you mean, conspiracy? I'm going home to Earth. She came to say good-bye—" Durham leaned forward. "You're the same two bastards from last night. What do you—"
"Please," said the man, contemptuously. He gestured with the gun. "You will both sit still with your hands behind your heads. So, Wanbecq-ai will search you. If either one should attempt to interfere, the other will suffer for it."
The wiry young woman did her work swiftly and efficiently. "No weapons," she said. "Hai! Wanbecq, look here!" She began to gabble in a strange tongue, pointing to Durham's passport and ticket, and then to Susan's ID card. Wanbecq's narrow eyes narrowed still further.
"So," he said to Durham. "Your name has changed since yesterday, Mr. Watson. And for one who returns to Sol III, you choose a long way around."
Susan stared hard at Durham. "What's he talking about?"
"Never mind. Listen, you—Wanbecq, is that your name? Miss Hawtree has nothing to do with any of this. Her father—"
"Is a part of the embassy which sent you out," said Wanbecq, flicking Susan's ID card with his finger. "Do not expect me to believe foolishness, Mr. Watson-Durham." He spoke rapidly to Wanbecq-ai. She nodded, and they both turned to Susan.
"Obviously
