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DR SELIM JuNz had been impatient for a year, but one does not become accustomed to impatience with tiht him that the Sarkite Civil Service could not be hurried; all the ely transplanted Florinians and therefore dreadfully careful of their own dignity

He had once asked old Abel, the Trantorian A that the soles of his boots had grown roots, why the Sarkites allowed their government departments to be run by the very people they despised so heartily

Abel had wrinkled his eyes over a goblet of green wine

"Policy, Junz," he said "Policy A ic They&039;re a small, no-account world, these Sarkites, in the as they control that everlasting gold mine, Florina So each year they ski the crea Thetheir blanks and signing their forms and the really clever ones they send back to Florina to act as native governors for the towns Townmen they call them"

Dr Junz was a Spatio-analyst, primarily He did not quite see the point of all this He said so

Abel pointed a blunt old forefinger at hioblet touched the ridged fingernail and subdued its yellow-grayness

He said, "You will never make an administrator Ask ent elements of Florina are won over to the Sarkite cause wholeheartedly, since while they serve Sark they are well taken care of, whereas if they turn their backs on Sark the best they can hope for is a return to a Florinian existence, which is not good, friend, not good"

He sed the wine at a draught and went on "Further, neither the Townmen nor Sark&039;s clerical assistantstheir positions Even with fe with Sarkites is, of course, out of the question In this way the best of the Floriian genes are being continually withdrawn froradually Florina will be composed only of hewers of wood and drawers of water"

"They&039;ll run out of clerks at that rate, won&039;t they?"

"A matter for the future"

So Dr Junz sat now in one of the outer anterooms of the Department for Florinian Affairs and waited impatiently to be allowed past the slow barriers, while Florinian underlings scurried endlessly through a bureaucratic maze

An elderly Floriian, shriveled in service, stood before him

"Dr Junz?"

"Yes"

"Co nu hi hi need be substituted Dr Junz thought "overnment department on Sark Florinian women were left on their planet, except for some house servants ere likewise forbidden to breed, and Sarkite women were, as Abel said, out of the question

He was gestured to a seat before the desk of the Clerk to the Undersecretary He knew the low etched upon the desk No Florinian could, of course, be ardless of how h his white fingers The Undersecretary and the Secretary of Floriian Affairs would theht meet them socially, he kneould never meet them here in the department

He sat, still ilancing carefully through the file, turning each h it held the secrets of the universe The raduate perhaps, and like all Florinians, very fair of skin and light of hair

Dr Junz felt an atavistic thrill He himself came frohly pigmented and his skin was a deep, rich brown There were feorlds in the Galaxy in which the skin color was so extreme as on either Libair or Florina Generally, intermediate shades were the rule

So with the notion that men of worlds like Libair, for instance, had arisen by independent but convergent evolution The older ed different species to the point where interbreeding was possible, as it certainly was a all the worlds in the Galaxy They insisted that on the original planet, whatever it was, mentation

This merely placed the proble so that Dr Junz found neither explanation satisfying Yet even now he found hiends of a past of conflict had lingered, for some reason, on the dark worlds Libairian myths, for instance, spoke of ti of Libair itself was held due to a party of browns fleeing from a defeat in battle

When Dr Junz left Libair for the Arcturian Institute of Spatial Technology and later entered his profession, the early fairy tales were forgotten Only once since then had he really wondered He had happened upon one of the ancient worlds of the Centaurian Sector in the course of business; one of those worlds whose history could be counted in e was so archaic that its dialect lish They had a special word for a man with dark skin

Nohy should there be a special word for a man with dark skin? There was no special word for a e ears, or curly hair There was no--The Clerk&039;s precise voice broke his reverie "You have been at this office before, according to the record"

Dr Junz said with some asperity, "I have indeed, sir"

"But not recently"

"No, not recently"

"You are still in search of a Spatio-analyst who disappeared"- the Clerk ffipped sheets-"soo"

"That&039;s right"

"In all that time," said the Clerk in his dry, crumbly voice out of which all the juice seen of the man and no evidence to the effect that he ever was anywhere in Sarkite territory"

"He was last reported," said the scientist, "in space near Sark" The Clerk looked up and his pale blue eyes focused for a moment on Dr Junz, then dropped quickly "This may be so, but it is not evidence of his presence on Sark"

Not evidence! Dr Junz&039;s lips pressed tightly together It hat the Interstellar Spatio-analytic Bureau had been telling hi bluntness for months

No evidence, Dr Junz We feel that your tiht be better employed, Dr Junz The Bureau will see to it that the search is maintained, Dr Junz

What they really h, Junz!

It had begun, as the Clerk had carefully stated, eleven o by Interstellar Standard Ti local time on a matter of this nature) Two days before that he had landed on Sark on as to be a routine inspection of the Bureau&039;s offices on that planet, but which turned out to be-well, which turned out to be what it was

He had beenhts chiefly by the fact that he chewed, incessantly, some elastic product of Sark&039;s chemical industry

It hen the inspection was alent had recalled so in the space behind his e from one of the field men, Dr Junz Probably not important You know them"

It was the usual expression of dismissal: You know them Dr

Junz looked up with a nation He was about to say that fifteen years ago he himself had been a "field man," then he remembered that after three er But it was that bit of anger that e with an earnest attention

It went: Please keep direct coded line open to ISB Central HQ for detailedby ent was a and he said, "Iine, sir &039;All Galaxy affected&039; That&039;s pretty good, even for a field ot this to see if I could make any sense out of hi that the life of every huer You know, half a billion lives at stake He sounded very psychopathic So, frankly, I don&039;t want to try to handle hiest?"

Dr Junz had said, "Do you have a transcript of your talk?"

"Yes, sir" There was a fewA sliver of filh the reader He frowned "This is a copy, isn&039;t it?"

"I sent the original to the Bureau of Extra-Planetary Transportation here on Sark I thought it would be best if theyfield with an ambulance He&039;s probably in a bad way"

Dr Junz felt the i man When the lonely analysts of the depths of space finally broke over their jobs, their psychopathies were likely to be violent

Then he said, "But wait You sound as though he hasn&039;t landed yet"

The agent looked surprised "I suppose he has, but nobody&039;s called et the details Psychopathic or not, the details must be on our records"

The Spatio-analyst had stopped in again the next day on a last-minute check before he left the planet He had other matters to attend to on other worlds, and he was in a moderate hurry Almost at the doorway, he said, over his shoulder, "How&039;s our field ent said, "Oh, say-I meant to tell you Transportation hasn&039;t heard froy pattern of his byperatomic uy "