He turned his eyes calmly onto Donal’s face, which had gone set and hard.

“Your tests are quite effective, aren’t they?” Donal said.

“They are,” said Sayona. “But there’s no need to look at me like that. We can’t use them as a weapon, to make you do what we would like to have you do. That would be an action so self-crippling as to destroy all its benefits. We can only make the offer to you.” He paused. “I can tell you that on the basis of our knowledge we can assure you with better than fair certainty that you’ll be happy if you take our path.”

“And if not?” Donal had not relaxed.

Sayona sighed.

“You are a strong man,” he said. “Strength leads to responsibility, and responsibility pays little heed to happiness.”

“I can’t say I like the picture of myself going through life grubbing after happiness.” Donal stood up. “Thanks for the offer, anyway. I appreciate the compliment it implies.”

“There is no compliment in telling a butterfly he is a butterfly and need not crawl along the ground,” said Sayona.

Donal inclined his head politely.

“Good-by,” he said. He turned about and walked the few steps to the head of the shallow steps leading down into the sunken garden and across it to the way he had come in.

“Donal—” The voice of Sayona stopped him. He turned back and saw the Bond regarding him with an expression almost impish. “I believe you can walk on air,” said Sayona.

Donal stared; but the expression of the other did not alter. Swinging about, Donal stepped out as if onto level ground — and to his unutterable astonishment his foot met solidity on a level, unsupported, eight inches above the next step down. Hardly thinking why he did it, Donal brought his other foot forward into nothingness. He took another step — and another. Unsupported on the thin air, he walked across above the sunken garden to the top of the steps on the far side.

Striding once more onto solidity, he turned about and looked across the short distance. Sayona still regarded him; but his expression now was unreadable. Donal swung about and left the garden.

Very thoughtful, he returned to his own quarters in the city of Portsmouth, which was the Maran city holding the Command Base of the Exotics. The tropical Maran night had swiftly enfolded the city by the time he reached his room, yet the soft illumination that had come on automatically about and inside all the buildings by some clever trick of design failed to white-out the overhead view of the stars. These shone down through the open wall of Donal’s bedroom.

Standing in the center of the bedroom, about to change for the meal which would be his first of the day — he had again forgotten to eat during the earlier hours — Donal paused and frowned. He gazed up at the gently domed roof of the room, which reached its highest point some twelve feet above his head. He frowned again and searched about through his writing desk until he found a self-sealing signal-tape capsule. Then, with this in one hand, he turned toward the ceiling and took one rather awkward step off the ground.

His foot caught and held in air. He lifted himself off the floor. Slowly, step by step he walked up through nothingness to the high point of the ceiling. Opening the capsule, he pressed its self-sealing edges against the ceiling, where they clung. He hung there a second in air, staring at them.

“Ridiculous!” he said suddenly — and, just as suddenly, he was falling. He gathered himself with the instinct of long training in the second of drop and, landing on hands and feet, rolled over and came to his feet like a gymnast against a far wall. He got up, brushing himself off, unhurt — and turned to look up at the ceiling. The capsule still clung there.

He lifted the little appliance that was strapped to his wrist and keyed its phone circuit in.

“Lee,” he said.

He dropped his wrist and waited. Less than a minute later, Lee came into the room. Donal pointed toward the capsule on the ceiling. “What’s that?” he asked.

Lee looked.

“Tape capsule,” he said. “Want me to get it down?”

“Never mind,” answered Donal. “How do you suppose it got up there?”

“Some joker with a float,” answered Lee. “Want me to find out who?”

“No — never mind,” said Donal. “That’ll be all.”

Bending his head at the dismissal, Lee went out of the room. Donal took one more look at the capsule, then turned and wandered over to the open wall of his room, and looked out. Below him lay the bright carpet of the city. Overhead hung the stars. For longer than a minute he considered them.

Suddenly he laughed, cheerfully and out loud.

“No, no,” he said to the empty room. “I’m a Dorsai!”

He turned his back on the view and went swiftly to work at dressing for dinner. He was surprised to discover how hungry he actually was.

Battle Commander of Field Forces Ian Ten Graeme, that cold, dark man, strode through the outer offices of the Protector of Procyon with a private-and-secret signal in his large fist. In the three outer offices, no one got hi his way. But at the entrance to the Protector’s private office, a private secretary in the green-and-gold of a staff uniform ventured to murmur that the Protector had left orders to be undisturbed. Ian merely looked at her, placed one palm flat against the lock of the inner office door — and strode through.

Within, he discovered Donal standing by an open wall, caught by a full shaft of Procyon’s white-gold sunlight, gazing out over Portsmouth and apparently deep in thought. It was a position in which he was to be discovered often, these later days. He looked up now at the sound of fan’s measured tread approaching.

Six years of military and political successes had laid their inescapable marks upon Donal’s face, marks plain to be seen in the sunlight. At a casual glance he appeared hardly older than the young man who had left the Dorsai half a dozen years before. But a closer inspection showed him to be slightly heavier of build now — even a little taller. Only this extra weight, slight increase as it was, had not served to soften the clear lines of his features. Rather these same features had grown more pronounced, more hard of line. His eyes seemed a little deeper set now; and the habit of command — command extended to the point where it became unconscious — had cast an invisible shadow upon his brows, so that it had become a face men obeyed without thinking, as if it was the natural thing to do.

“Well?” he said, as Ian came up.

“They’ve got New Earth,” his uncle answered; and handed over the signal tape. “Private-and-secret to you from Galt.”

Donal took the tape automatically, that deeper, more hidden part of him immediately taking over his mind. If the six years had wrought changes upon his person and manner, they had worked to even greater ends below the surface of his being. Six years of command, six years of estimate and decision had beaten broad the path between his upper mind and that dark, oceanic part of him, the depthless waters of which lapped on all known shores and many yet unknown. He had come — you could not say to terms — but to truce with the source of his oddness; hiding it well from others, but accepting it to himself for the sake of the tool it placed in his hands. Now, this information Ian had just brought him was like one more stirring of the shadowy depths, a rippled vibration spreading out to affect all, integrate with all — and make even more clear the vast and shadowy ballet of purpose and counter-purpose that was behind all living action; and — for himself — a call to action.

As Protector of Procyon, now responsible not only for the defense of the Exotics, but of the two smaller inhabited planets in that system — St. Marie, and Coby — that action was required of him. But even more; as himself, it was required of him. So that what it now implied was not something he was eager to avoid. Rather, it was due, and welcome. Indeed, it was almost too welcome — fortuitous, even.