"And you're in full charge of preparing him and running some mission he is on?" I nodded.

She smiled. She has very beautiful white teeth. I was very conscious of those teeth. She gently took my arm-ignoring my flinch – and guided me over to a bench and sat me down on it.

"You need a language brushup," she said.

I tried to get up nerve to tell her my English and Italian and Turkish and half a dozen other languages were in perfect shape. But my mouth didn't seem to want to talk. Too dry.

She walked sedately over to the racks and got down a hypnohelmet and came over to me with it. I offered no slightest resistance. After all, I'd spent weeks in these things. She patted my head comfortingly and then slid the helmet over it. From her coverall pocket she took a recorded strip.

"It's just a little accent check," she said, smiling gently.

She slid the strip into the slot and turned the helmet on.

There was the familiar buzz. I was out like a turned off glowplate.

I came to. I was a trifle surprised to see that a half hour had gone by. She was piling some books onto the table and neating up the chair some more. She saw I was out of it. She picked up a book and came over.

When the helmet was unstrapped and off, she patted me on the head again. "Now," she said, "read this and we'll see how your accent is. First, Virginian." I thought this was pretty silly. There was nothing wrong with my accent in commercial English. She sensed resistance. "Now, Jettero will be talking Virginian. It's a city or something, isn't it? On some planet named 'Earth.' And you must be able to understand him. Read." And she pointed her finger at the page.

I read aloud, Obedience is the mother of success, the wife of safety.

Then, The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience.

She clapped her hands like a child. "Oh, that is very good, Soltan. You read it in perfect Virginian." I wondered how in Hells she knew it was perfect "Virginian." Had she been studying English?

She pointed her finger down the page, "Now, Soltan, read this in New England." I read, speaking a bit nasally, He who takes his orders gladly, escapes the bitterest part of slavery – doing what one does not want to do.

"Ah, splendid, splendid, Soltan!" She yanked the book away. "Truly perfect New England." Now, I myself had not been able to notice any real difference. I had imitated what they call "Americans" before and you just speak through your nose. I felt sort of funny.

A slam-bang opening of the main door halted any further conversation. The Countess Krak went flying off in that direction. I got up and went over to see what this was all about.

What? It was one of Snelz's guards with a big package for her. I was in time to catch a flash of the label: something about, "To a dazzling star." She took the package. She seemed confused. Upset. Embarrassed. "For me?"she asked.

"That's what he said, Countess." In a sort of a daze she put it on her desk and tore it open. Then she just stood there, staring down. At length she said, "Ooooo!" and put her hand to her breast. She was cooing!

I got into a position so I could see what it was. A bomb? So she could break out?

She lifted something up. She ran over to a mirror and held it against her. She said, "Oooo!" and ran back to the package and got something else and then ran to the mirror. . . .

The card slipped off. It was signed "Jet." Oh, my Gods! He was giving her clothes! Now giving an unmarried woman clothes means just one thing: a pass! Trouble, I thought, you have my address!

The package, when it all got sorted out, contained threeskintight, elastic cover suits, the very latest fashion. One was shimmering black, one was bright scarlet and one was gleaming silver. Each had a matching pair of elastic ankle boots with small flowers on them and each had a matching headband with flowers to match the boots. Extremely feminine stuff. For the Countess Krak?

I got it. All he had heard of my dissertation on her, possibly, was that she had no clothes!

(Bleep) him. And (bleep) Snelz! The platoon commander must have sent a guardsman all the way to the city at dawn. Heller, sleeping so peacefully when I left, must have been right behind me out that door!

She was waltzing around in the center of the room, holding the silver one against her.

Then she rushed back to the desk and found his card and pressed it to her chest.

I looked at my watch. Ouch, were we overdue for instruction this morning! I started to hurry out.

"No, no!" cried the Countess Krak. "Give me twenty minutes before you bring him down. I have to bathe again and get dressed!" Right that moment I got a horrible premonition that all this was going to wind up in catastrophe. I do wish now I had learned to obey my hunches. They were right!

In my room I found Jettero Heller lounging in an easy chair, eyes half-closed, idle beyond belief. The furthest thing from his mind appeared to be Mission Earth. Some supplementary reading I had given him lay in a neglected pile. Soft but plaintive music was coming over the Homeviewer and some female singer was on the screen. Love songs!

Now if there is anything that hurts my sensitive ears it is a high-pitched, echo orchestra and the quavering, sobbing soprano of a love balladess. Furthermore, they paint their faces black for "unrequited love" and by means of tubes beside their eyes they shed red tears-tears of blood. And the melodies are all down scale: And so faded my glow Into the sorrow That took me in tow To the deep pits of woe And with my last breath I'll still cry for death And grave clothes to use as my trousseau.

Sickening!

So this was Heller's idea of charging out and getting the job done!

In a flash of insight, I realized what I was up against. Love! There are warnings in the standard espionage texts: they give a lot of biological tables stressing that it is irrational; they go over a lot of examples of how even Royal houses have been destroyed because the practical marriage orders were flouted by young Princes and Princesses who stupidly fell in love with somebody else; they don't tell you how to use it but they warn against pairing a male and female agent. They say there's no way to thwart it short of shooting somebody. Well, the professors might not be able to use it, but I could. I owed my rise in the Apparatus to being cunning.

I was cunning now. In a very sweet voice, I said, "You had better get cleaned up. In . . . ," and I ostentatiously looked at my watch, ". . . twenty minutes you have an appointment in the training rooms with the Countess Krak." Holy Gods! He came out of that chair like he'd been catapult-launched.

He had washed his white exercise suit the night before but in this airless cubicle it wasn't dry and he frantically rigged a heat fan. He rushed about, showered, dried and combed his hair and dressed and all in about eight minutes. Then, of course, we had to wait three or four minutes and he sat there fidgeting. I turned off the Homeview: I couldn't take any more echo orchestra and down scale love ballads – they came through to me more like funeral dirges and if I didn't get Heller off this planet, there was going to be one more – mine.

Still a minute early, we arrived outside the training rooms. He went through the door.

I was about to follow him when a hand stopped me. It was the Countess Krak's training assistant, a very ugly brute. "Message just came, Officer Gris. You're wanted at the central guard office at Camp Endurance." What now? In some alarm I made sure two guardsmen were posted outside the door and went tearing off.

It always takes time to get through the tunnel and it was almost an hour later when I arrived at the Camp Endurance guard office.