He'd never make a special agent. Not in a million, million years. I was not going to have trouble making him fail. I was going to have trouble keeping him afloat long enough not to drag medown. Spying takes an instinct. Oh my, he didn't have it! This wasn't going to be a failed mission. This was going to be a total catastrophe!

"Make yourself at home," I said. "I'm going to Government City to get your orders."

I am sure you have noticed that the first impression a visitor gets of the Fleet Administration Complex in Government City is that he has just encountered an actual fleet in outer space. When somebody said "buildings," their architects must have thought "ships." It is most annoying: there they are, spotted around ten square miles of otherwise barren land, like ten thousand huge, silver ships. They're even in formation! They say the officers and clerks even wear spaceboots! And not a shrub or tree to be seen anywhere!

When I have to fly there, I always feel like I'm an invader having to be repelled. Marines, marines, marines, gates, gates, gates, all built like atmosphere ports. Passes, passes, passes. It just occurred to me that maybe I don't like the place because they always look at my identification plates, see I'm from the Apparatus and sneer. But after two hours I finally got where I was trying to go.

The Fleet Personnel Officer was sitting in a cubicle for all the world like a storeroom on a battleship. The walls were solid, deck to overhead, with machines and screens, dazzling with their flashing, multicolored lights. You'd think he was fighting a battle – and maybe he was, with four million Fleet officers to shift around.

He was probably a nice enough fellow: a bit old, a bit fat. He looked up as though to greet me cheerfully but he didn't. He frowned a trifle instead. There was just a trace of wondering disapproval in his voice. "You're from the 'drunks'?" Now, nobody had announced me as anything but "An officer from Exterior Division," and I was wearing the noncommittal gray uniform of General Services, not even a pocket patch. I involuntarily looked down at myself. How could he tell? I saw no grease spots, no food stains, no old blood. But I also saw no style, no flair. No pride! Shabby!

I had had it all rehearsed but his remark disconcerted me. "I want transfer orders for Combat Engineer Jettero Heller," I blurted out. No gradual briefing, no persuasion.

The Fleet Personnel Officer frowned heavily. "Jettero Heller?" Then he repeated the name to himself. He had buttons and flashing lights all over the place but here he was depending on memory. "Oh, Jet!" He had it now. "The Royal Academy driving champion a few years ago. And wasn't he later a runner-up for interplanetary bullet ball? Yes. Ah, yes, Jettero Heller. Great athlete." All this was very promising for he seemed to have mellowed. I was just opening my mouth to push my request again when he suddenly frowned.

"You'll have to get clearance from the Admiralty of Combat Engineers. That's Course 99. Just outside that door, you turn . . ."

"Please," I said. I had already been to that Admiralty and they had sent me here. Desperately, I dived into my paper case and snapped out the Grand Council order. "This supersedes all clearances. Please transfer him to the Exterior Division." He looked the order all over though I'm sure he had seen hundreds of them before. He peered at me very suspiciously. Then he slapped his palm down on an array of switches, one after the other; he dithered around with his button console, transferring the Grand Council order number into his information network. Then he sat looking at a screen I couldn't see. He frowned heavily. I half expected some marines to suddenly rush in and arrest me.

With total finality he slapped his board shut. "No, can't possibly do it." Lombar's shadow loomed closer. "What's the matter?" I quavered. "Has the Grand Council order been cancelled?"

"No, no, no," he said impatiently. "The order is in the data bank, all authentic – though I must say, you never can tell when you're dealing with the 'drunks'." He dismissed all that and sat there frowning. Finally he tossed the Grand Council order back at me. "It's just impossible, that's all." Bureaucracy! Actually, I sighed with relief. When one is a member of the Apparatus, realtrouble is always a close companion. But bureaucracy is trouble everybody has. It's a system evolved so that nobody in it is ever responsible for anything. "Why can't it be done?" Like explaining shoes to a child, he said, "In the first place, a combat engineer is in the Fleet. The Exterior Division – and I still think you're from the 'drunks' – is an entirely different division of the government. When you say you want him transferred, you're saying that he would have to resign from the Fleet, make application for commission in the Exterior Division, come up through their ranks . . . it would take years! I'm sure you don't have years. And you have notbrought his resignation from the Fleet. So it can't be done." For a moment I wondered if Heller had known all this – that he had known it was this complicated and was using a cunning out. Maybe he was cleverer than I had given him credit for. (Looking back on it now, I wish he had been!) But the best authorities on bureaucracy are the bureaucrats. So I myself got clever. "If you had this problem I've got," I said, "how would youhandle it?" That was a lot better than going back to the Apparatus and finding some blackmail on this fellow – there always is some and if it doesn't exist, one makes it up and "documents" it. But an order illegally obtained by coercion might, itself, be illegal. It was much more clever to do it straight. Novel, but it might work.

He thought for a while, really being helpful. He brightened. "Ah! I could just give you a standard set of orders for a combat engineer." And (bleep) him, he simply pushed some buttons and a couple seconds later a form came out of a slot. He handed it to me. It said: FLEET ORDER M-93872654-MM-93872655-CE REFERENCE: GRAND COUNCIL ORDER 938362537-451BP3 KNOW ALL JETTERO HELLER GRADE X COMBAT ENGINEER SERIAL E555MXP IS HEREBY AND HEREWITH AS OF THIS DATE ORDERED TO INDEPENDENT DUTY ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE TERMINATING ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE.

ENDORSEMENT: SEE REFERENCE.

ISSUED, AUTHENTICATED AND VERIFIED BY THE FLEET PERSONNEL OFFICER Brightly, he said, "That all right?"

"Kind of sweeping," I said.

"Oh," he said, "combat engineers are always ordered out that way: mostly blasting away behind enemy lines, you know; who can tell how long it will take them. That's why they have to be such reliable people. They almost always, unless they're killed, carry through whatever you set them at. Their corps motto, you know, is 'Whatever the odds, to Hells with them, get the job done.' Remarkable people. Will those orders do? They're a standard combat engineer form, you know." I was shaken, both by the idiot simplicity of the orders and by what he had just said. Had Lombar known any of this? I doubted it. What were we biting off? Could we chew it?

Jettero Heller had known what the orders would say. He must have received dozens of them. He must have known that this would really put him outside the control of the Exterior Division and the Apparatus. By the evil Gods, I was going to have to work like mad to keep him on a leash! I began to doubt I could execute myorders and make the mission fail.

I got a grip on myself. It's one thing to go blasting in with the burners wide open and blow up an enemy town. But it was quite another to operate in the dark and secret world of espionage. I thought of the ease with which we'd kidnapped him, I remembered his total stupidity that morning, I thought of his fatal notions of sportsmanship.

"Yes," I said. "They're fine. By all means sign it." I handed over my own identoplate so he could authenticate it and feed his hungry machines. "I'd like some extra copies." He punched and scribbled away. "I think Jet's Academy track record still stands. Great athlete. Nice fellow, too, they say." And finally, "Here's his orders. Wish him good luck." I got out of there. It felt odd to have done a straight, legal piece of work, no twists. The honest world is a strange place for a member of the Apparatus. It leaves one feeling confused. Unfamiliar territory!