I was going through dull things like Earth (or Blito-P3) poppy crop reports, predicted yields based on predicted rainfall and predictions about predictors, a doorman at the United Nations wanting too much money for bugging a diplomat’s car, an overcharge on an assassination of an Arab sheik — dull things like that — when I came to something fascinating: Bawtch had made a mistake! Incredible! Wonderful! He was always bragging that he never did! And here it was!

The report was from the Chief Interrogator of Spiteos. It concerned one Gunsalmo Silva, the brawling American I had seen carried off the Blixo back on Voltar.

He had been questioned exhaustively. He had been born in Caltagirone, Sicily, an island near Italy. He had killed a policeman in Rome when he was fourteen and had had to emigrate hastily to America. In New York City, he had been arrested for stealing cars and had graduated from the prison with honors. Thus equipped, he had obtained honest employment as a hit man for the Corleone family of the New Jersey Mafia and had graduated to become a bodyguard of Don “Holy Joe” Corleone himself. When “Holy Joe” got “wasted,” Gunsalmo had fled back to Sicily and then, finding it “too hot,” had “taken it on the lam” for Turkey, hoping to become an “opium runner.” As our Turkish base had an order to kidnap a highly placed Mafioso — simply to update information — Gunsalmo Silva had wound up on the Blixo.

The interrogators had bled him pale for information but all he revealed consisted of the names and addresses of the heads of two Mafia families, one of which was now running the gambling in Atlantic City, and the names of four United States senators who were on Mafiosi payrolls and one judge of the Supreme Court they had blackmail on. So what’s new?

The Chief Interrogator — an Apparatus officer named Drihl, a very thorough fellow — had added a note:

A rather useless and uninformed acquisition as he was only a hit man and not privy to upper-level politics and finance. Would suggest the order, if the data required is of operational importance, be reforwarded to Blito-P3 to kidnap someone of a more informed rank.

But that wasn’t where Bawtch had made his mistake. It was in the orders endorsement section at the end, the place where I have to stamp.

It was an “unless otherwise directed” form. It said:

Unless otherwise directed, said Gunsalmo Silva shall be hypnoblocked as to his stay in Spiteos and shall then be forwarded to the Extra-Confederacy Apparatus Hypno-School of Espionage and Infiltration, trained and hypnoblocked concerning his kidnapping and returned in memory suspension for further disposition by the Base Commander on Blito-P3.

The form had a second line:

If said subject is to be discontinued — a clerical euphemism for being killed — the ordering officer is to stamp here:_________.

There was the place right there where it could be stamped!

And that careless Bawtch had not marked it urgent and had not presented it to me for stamping, even though he knew very well that if the form was not stamped in two days, the “unless otherwise directed” would go into effect. A criminal omission! Leaving a line that could be stamped unstamped was about the sloppiest bureaucracy anybody could imagine!

I hastily thumbed through the next half-dozen forms. Yes, indeed. Old Bawtch was really slipping. I knew that sour temper would do him in someday. There were seven forms here which — unless otherwise directed — ordered people to be hypnoblocked and sent elsewhere. Every one of them had a “discontinued” line which could be stamped! The old fool had missed every one of them. Him and his flapping side-blinders. Oh, it was a good thing for him I wasn’t back on Voltar. I would throw them on his desk and say in a haughty voice, “I knew you were slipping, Bawtch. Look at those unstamped, perfectly stampable lines!”

Well, maybe I wouldn’t have said that. But the incident cheered me up quite a bit. Imagine old Bawtch forgetting to give me something to stamp! Incredible!

Then a sudden thought struck me. The Prahd package! The one that contained his overcoat and duplicate identoplate and the forged suicide note. I had been so hurried that night, I’d forgotten to give it to a courier to hold and mail a week after we left. That package was still sitting there on the floor beside my office desk.

Oh, well, we can’t remember everything, can we? A mere detail. Unimportant.

I plowed on through the rest of the pile and finished them. I was disappointed that I had not consumed more time. I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I couldn’t, actually. And here I was careening through space, boxed in, in a little steel-alloy cubicle with nothing to do but think. And thinking was something I wanted to avoid just now.

I saw that the bulkhead clock had acquired a new circle. It said:

I blew up! (Bleep) Heller anyway. Making a silly mistake like that.

Keeping me not just twenty-two but another thirty-four hours in this (bleeped) box.

I was furious!

I was going back and give him a piece of my mind. The worst piece of it I could locate!

I got up. An electric arc from the table corner zapped my bare hand. I put my feet on the floor. An arc leaped off a studding and hit me in the toe. I grabbed for a steadying handrail and the blue snap of electricity almost burned my fingers. This (bleeped) tug was alive with electricity!

Somebody had laid out some insulator gloves and boots. I got them on.

I jabbed at a communicator button to the aft area. “I’m coming back to see you!” I yelled.

Heller’s voice answered, “Come ahead. The doors are not locked.”

It was time I put him in his place!

Here we were, tearing through space like madmen, only to have to wait and only because he had made a stupid mistake. Forcing the ship to go this fast could blow it up. And all for nothing!