Eddie Dirrul had destroyed the message seconds after reading it. Yet, as he left the pneumotube from the University, he felt as if it were burning a hole in his pocket. It had come to him from Paul Sorgel, the new top-agent from the Planet Vinin. It had been written in High Vininese.

For a moment the alien language had slowed Eddie's reaction to its contents, as had the shocking nature of its words. It had read—

Luckily old Dr. Kramer had asked no awkward questions when Eddie excused himself from the balance of the lecture. If the kindly bumbling professor had been inquisitive, Eddie had no idea how he would have answered. Glenna was his fiancÉe, Hurd his best friend—and their disaster meant disaster for the underground movement that had become the guiding purpose of his entire life.

The night was still young when he emerged from the pneumotube and the slanting ramp-lines of windows in the massive unit-blocks of the Workers' Suburb rose about him within the darkness of the structural frames that encased them.

Parks, recreation centers and gaudy amusement halls were aswirl with the usual evening crowds. With a sort of angry heedlessness Eddie forced his way among tall perpetually-youthful men in bright leisure clothing—and consciously alluring women clad in filmy garments as teasingly transparent as mist.

Glenna hurt—and Hurd! Seriously, of course, or Paul Sorgel would never have risked a hand-message. With quiet desperation he pushed through the crowds—in his trim grey Air-command uniform he was one with them, a nonentity like themselves.

He knew where to find the three he sought. Beyond the outdoor courts, where his fellow-Agronians amused themselves with a variety of racquet-games, lay a tiny park, wherein a state of wild disorder was carefuly maintained in imitation of nature.

Few were attracted by its rugged growth, save in very warm weather, when hardy souls ventured within its borders to relax in artificial breezes created by silent concealed fans. In its center stood a small stone building that housed the maintenance machinery. It was deserted, except for once each year when the city engineering crews came to check the machines and to make minor repairs. There the Libero-Freedom Movement held its meetings, in the shadow of the whirring wheels.

Sorgel came out of the shadows as Dirrul pushed through the thicket of brush that surrounded the stone building. In a hushed whisper he asked, "That you, Eddie?"

"Yes—where are they?"

"Inside. I gave them a hypo—they're both under now. It makes it easier."

"How did it happen, Paul?"

"I was to meet Glenna and Hurd at her apartment, to talk over the details of the Plan. The police were there ahead of me but I broke up the party before they could finish the job. Since they've got to do this sort of thing unofficially, to be able to deny it later if any questions are asked, I scared them off easily enough. I brought Glenna and Hurd here in my Unicyl but I'll need your help to get them out."

"This is the second time it's happened, Paul!" said Eddie. "And the Plan—we'll have to organize all over again. As soon as our people hear about this most of them will run like scared rabbits."

"Not if they don't know, Eddie. That's where you come in. We've got to get Glenna and Hurd away from Agron. If there's no evidence of a crime there's no reason for an investigation."

"But what can I do?"

"Borrow one of the Air-command's surface jets for a while."

Paul Sorgel's plan was simple and efficient. The Air-Command field was fenced with electronic paralysis barriers and the entrance was heavily guarded. But no watch was kept inside the encampment except for a daily inspection of the machines when the guard was changed at dawn. Since Dirrul was a Captain of the Space-maintenance Division, 73rd Air-Command Wing, he was able to enter the area at any time without question. Among the scheduled night training flights for new cadets, the departure of one more surface jet would pass unobserved.

"Come back here for Glenna and Hurd," Sorgel said, "and take them out to the South Desert. If there's no hitch you should be back before dawn, with time to spare. If not...." Sorgel shrugged. "Eddie, we can't build a better universe without taking occasional risks."

Slowly Dirrul's body tensed with fear. In a cold dead voice he asked, "Am I to leave them there, without help or medicine, to die of thirst and hunger?"

"Many sacrifices are necessary for the good of the Movement."

"But Glenna and Hurd are our leaders!"

"The freedom of the universe means a little more, I think, than the temporary safety of two individuals." Sorgel lit a cigarette. In the faint pink reflection of the Glo-Wave lighter his face was emptily placid, a faint smile twisting the corners of his lips. "Suppose I say it's a command, Dirrul—a Vininese command, calling for Vininese discipline."

After a moment Dirrul replied in a choked whisper, "I'll take them, sir."

Sorgel smiled and the crisp tone of authority edged out of his voice. "As a matter of fact, Eddie, I was curious to see what you would do. The Vininese Confederacy practises neither cruelty nor deception. You'll find one of our Space-dragons hidden in a gorge of the Katskain Range. It's the ship I came in a week ago.

"The pilot was instructed to wait fifteen planetary revolutions in the event that I might have a report to send back to Headquarters. You must learn to trust me, Eddie. From the first, you see, I intended to send Glenna and Hurd to Vinin. If they get there in time there's a chance our Medical Corps can pull them through. They may even be back here with us for the day when we carry out the Plan."

Dirrul was in no real danger. Much as it benefited the Movement the laxity of Agronian security was one of the chief reasons why Dirrul scorned the Planetary Union. The space-wide patrols of the Air-Command, the city guards and the electronic paralysis barricades created a feeling of internal control—but it was all a glittering sham. If it were not for the Nuclear Beams the whole system would long since have crumbled under the first pressure from outside.

With no difficulty he picked up Glenna and Hurd and took them to the South Desert, where he put them aboard the sleek Vininese space-ship. It was one of the new Dragon design—compact, efficient, faster than anything built by the Planetary Union, protected by sixteen circular batteries and yet small enough to be handled by one man.

Dirrul had seen only one other Vininese Space-dragon and that from a distance at the Agronian commercial airport, when the last Vininese ambassador arrived. Technically there was no reason why Paul Sorgel could not have landed there as well, except that the Customs questionnaire might have proved embarrassing.

Twenty years earlier, when Dirrul was still a schoolboy, the Galactic War had ended. Since that time relations between the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy had steadily improved—at least in appearance. Undoubtedly there were commercial interests on both sides anxious to maintain peace and in recent years the quantity of goods in trade had grown enormously. But it was a truce, not a peace—a compromise, rather than a victory—forced on the galaxy when the scientists of the Planetary Union discovered the Nuclear Beams.

Pain shot through Dirrul's mind as he carried Glenna into the pressurized chamber under the control room. She and Hurd were still unconscious but Glenna turned in his arms and her eyes fluttered open. She looked at him and screamed in terrible agony before the pilot of the Space-dragon plunged a hypodermic sedative into her arm.

"It is better," he said to Dirrul in throaty Vininese. "So beautiful a one should not feel the pain." Carefully he fastened the needlepoint of a wall tube into Glenna's vein and another into Hurd's.

"Synthetic blood feeding," he said with a smile. "It will keep them alive, perhaps even permitting minor wounds to heal, until I deliver them to the authorities on Vinin. You see, sir, my little ship is well-equipped." He slammed the round door of the hospital room shut and led Dirrul to the control blister.

"How long will it be, this trip to Vinin?" Dirrul asked, speaking very slowly in classical Vininese. Like everyone in the Movement he had studied the language of Vinin as a sort of courtesy and duty but he had no illusion about his small ability to handle it.

"In terms of your time," the pilot said, "about thirty days."

"Only thirty? The Planetary Union hasn't a ship that could make it under sixty!"

"But this is a Space-dragon." The words were self-explanatory.

Proudly the pilot showed Dirrul the controls, as functional and as uncomplex as the cool clean lines of the ship herself. The design was so logical, so basically simple, that within a few minutes Dirrul understood enough of the mechanism to have driven the ship himself.

"Your scientists could do as well," the pilot suggested, "if they wished."

"Not mine," Dirrul said.

"Pardon—the scientists of the Planetary Union. On Vinin we create for the future, for the progress of the Confederacy. We have no patience with petty argument, tedious experimentation or the pointless splitting of hairs that seems to occupy so much of your time here. For us a scientist is a producer, like everyone else. If he fails to do his job we replace him."

Pleased with the comparison the pilot chuckled over his dials as he turned on the power. Above the roar he said to Dirrul, "We must talk again one day, sir. If you ever have the good fortune to come to Vinin be sure to look me up."