And there he was, using the corridor outside the storerooms as a running track. He apparently had two bags of running weights over his right and left shoulder as I could see the weight sacks bouncing as he trotted. Him and his exercise! Adding weights to keep his muscles in trim despite the reduced gravity of this planet. Athletes!

That wasn’t anything I could really snarl about, so I thought I’d better check earlier. I backed to the point I’d left him and raced it ahead.

Oho! He had been very busy! After his silly survey, he had been inside the ship no time at all.

I couldn’t quite make out what he first did.

There were strange things on his legs. He stopped at the ladder bottom when he exited from the ship and adjusted something on his ankles. He had some bags and a coil of rope slung around him and I couldn’t quite see the ankles because the gear swung in the way.

He went straight to the construction shop. A technician was in there, fiddling at a bench. He spotted who it was that had invaded his cave and quickly looked away, saying nothing.

“I want to borrow your hand rock-corer,” said Heller in a friendly voice.

The technician shook his head.

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Heller, “I’ll have to insist. This appears to be earthquake country and you have an awfully big excavation here. There seems to be flaking in the rock. I am concerned for the safety of my ship. It will probably be here on and off and it must not be risked by a cave-in. So please lend me a corer.”

The technician almost angrily took a small tool from a drawer and thrust it at Heller. Heller thanked him courteously and went off.

These combat engineers! Heller took a hitch on his bags and began to climb the vertical interior rock face of the hangar wall!

I knew what he had on his ankles now. They are just called “spikes” but actually they are little drills that buzz briefly as they drill a small hold in rock or other material. In the Apparatus we used them for second-story work. But engineers climb mountain faces with them. There is a drill in the toe of the boot, one on the heel, one on the outside and one on the inside of each ankle. They terrify me: you can drill a hole in your inside anklebone with them!

Heller just spiked his way up the wall. Ouch! He was wearing them on his wrists, too! Had he worn these last night to go up Afyonkarahisar? No, I was sure he hadn’t. They would have been visible in the fight and a breach of the Space Code.

Ah, he was wearing them now because he was working. He had to stop and do other things. He was about fifteen feet from the hangar floor now. The corer started up. It set my teeth on edge.

With the tool, he drilled a plug out of the rock face. It was about an inch in diameter and three inches long: just a little shaft of stone.

He held it real close to his eye, inspecting it. The section exposed the rock grain. He examined it very critically. It sure looked all right to me!

He took a little hammer and with a tap, he knocked off the last half-inch of the plug, caught the fragment and put it in a bag. Then he took a can out of his shoulder sack. The label said Rock Glue, and very badly lettered it was.

He put a gooey piece of rock glue on the plug and put it back in the hole. He tapped it neatly with a hammer and in a moment you couldn’t tell that an inspection core had been taken out.

Heller went along to his left a few feet and did the same thing. And, working swiftly, he did it again and again and again, plug after plug after plug!

Well, it was all right to watch him when he was only fifteen feet off the floor. Trouble was, he went up to fifty feet and started the same procedure and every time he looked down, I got an awful feeling. I hate heights!

So, anyway, I skipped ahead.

Heller had gotten himself clear up to the lower edge of the electronic illusion which, from there on up, gave us a mountaintop. And he said something!

I quickly turned it back and replayed it.

“Why,” muttered Heller, “do all Apparatus areas stink! And not only that, why do they have to seal the airflow with an illusion so it will never air out!”

Aha! I was getting to him. He was beginning to talk to himself. A sure sign!

He lit a small flamer and turned it so it smoked. He watched the resultant behavior of the small fog. “Nope,” he said, “no air can get in. By the Gods, I’ll have to find the switch of this thing.”

I didn’t keep the strip there very long. He kept looking down and three hundred feet under him a dolly operator looked like a pebble. Stomach wrenching!

I sped ahead to find more sound. I found some and stopped. But he was just humming. That silly one about Bold Prince Caucalsia.

A bit later, he tried to talk to the hangar chief who, of course, on my rumor, ignored him. Heller finally put a hand on the man’s shoulder and made him face him. “I said,” said Heller, “where are the controls for the electronic illusion? I want to turn it off tonight to air the place out! You’re trapping moisture in here.”

“It’s always on,” the hangar chief snarled. “It’s been on for ages. I don’t even think the switches work anymore. It’s running on its own power source and it won’t have to be touched for a century. You want things changed around here, take it up with the base commander.” And he went off snarling about routine, routine, all he needed was one more routine to clutter up his day.

Captain Stabb was over by the ship. The five Antimancos were not housed aboard the tug. They were in the berthing area of the hangar — much more comfortable and they could more easily get to town. No eighty-foot ladder. It pleased Captain Stabb immensely that Heller had been rebuffed in his passion for fresh air. Oh, he would never last in the Apparatus! These Fleet guys!

Heller went back aboard.

I sped ahead. He had apparently come out again to do some running. He was gradually lightening his weights to adjust his stride to this planet.

Silly athletes.

I shut him off and went back to glooming about my lost dancing girl. The world was against me.

The following day, toward noon, I was just beginning to come out of my dumps when something else happened to free-fall me back into them.

It was a smoking hot day: the August sun had cranked the thermometer up to a Turkish 100 — meaning about 105. I had been lying in a shadowy part of the yard, back of a miniature temple to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the hunt. My pitcher of iced sira was empty; I had gotten tired of kicking the small boy who was supposed to be fanning me, when suddenly I heard a songbird. It was a canary! A canary had gone wild! Instantly my primitive instincts kindled! I had bought, a year ago, a ten-gauge shotgun and I had never tried it out! That would handle that canary!

Instantly aquiver, I leaped up and raced to my room. I got my shotgun rapidly enough but I couldn’t find the shells. And that was peculiar as they are big enough to load a cannon with. I went to my sleeping room and started threshing through my bedside drawers.

And then something happened which drove all thought of hunting from my mind.

There was an envelope pinned to my pillow!

It had not been there after I arose.

Somebody had been in this room!

But nobody had crossed the yard to my area! How had this gotten there? Flown in on the wind? There was no wind.

It was the type of envelope which is used to carry greetings in certain Voltar social circles: it gives off a subdued glitter. Had I found a snake in my bed, I would have been less surprised.

I got nerve enough generated to pick it up. It did not seem to be the exploding type.

Gingerly, as though it were hot, I extracted the card. A greeting card. A sorry-you-were-not-in-when-I-called type of card. It had handwriting on it. It said, quite elegantly: