Not that this was any paradise, worker's or otherwise. But it still came as a mild surprise. Henry Kuran couldn't remember so far back that he hadn't had his daily dose of anti-Russianism. Not unless it was for the brief respite during the Second World War when for a couple of years the Red Army had been composed of heroes and Stalin had overnight become benevolent old Uncle Joe.

There weren't as many cars on the streets as in American cities, but there were more than he had expected nor were they 1955 model Packards. So far as he could see, they were approximately the same cars as were being turned out in Western Europe.

Public transportation, he admitted, was superior to that found in the Western capitals. Obviously, it would have to be, without automobiles, buses, streetcars and subways would have to carry the brunt of traffic. However, it was the spotless efficiency of public transportation that set him back.

The shops were still short of the pinnacles touched by Western capitals. They weren't empty of goods, luxury goods as well as necessities, but they weren't overflowing with the endless quantities, the hundred-shadings of quality and fashion that you expected in the States.

But what struck nearest to him was the fact that the people in the streets were not broken spirited depressed, humorless drudges. In fact, why not admit it, they looked about the same as people in the streets anywhere else. Some laughed, some looked troubled. Children ran and played. Lovers held hands and looked into each other's eyes. Some reeled under an overload of vodka. Some hurried along, business bent. Some dawdled, window shopped, or strolled along for the air. Some read books or newspapers as they shuffled, radar directed, and unconscious of the world about them.

They were only a day and half in Leningrad. They saw the Hermitage, comparable to the Louvre and far and above any art museum in America. They saw the famous subway—which deserved its fame. They were ushered through a couple of square miles of the Elektrosile electrical equipment works, claimed ostentatiously by the to be the largest in the world. They ate in restaurants as good as any Hank Kuran had been able to afford at home and stayed one night at the Astoria Hotel.

At least, Hank had the satisfaction of grumbling about the plumbing.

Paco and Loo, the only single bachelors on the tour besides himself, were again quartered with him at the Astoria.

Paco said, "My friend, there I agree with you completely. America has the best plumbing in the world. And the most."

Hank was pulling off his shoes after an arch-breaking day of sightseeing. "Well, I'm glad I've finally found some field where it's agreeable that the West is superior to the Russkies."

Loo was stretched out on his bed, in stocking feet, gazing at the ceiling which towered at least fifteen feet above him. He said "In the town where I was born, there were three bathrooms, one in the home of the missionary, one in the home of the commissioner, and one in my father's palace." He looked up at Hank. "Or is my country considered part of the Western World?"

Paco laughed. "Come to think of it, I doubt if one third the rural homes of Argentina have bathrooms. Hank, my friend, I am afraid Loo is right. You use the word West too broadly. All the capitalist world is not so advanced as the United States. You have been very lucky, you Yankees."

Hank sank into one of the huge, Victorian era armchairs. "Luck has nothing to do with it. America is rich because private enterprise works."

"Of course," Paco pursued humorously, "the fact that your country floats on a sea of oil, has some of the richest forest land in the world, is blessed with some of the greatest mineral deposits anywhere and millions of acres of unbelievably fertile land has nothing to do with it."

"I get your point," Hank said. "The United States was handed the wealth of the world on a platter. But that's only part of it."

"Yes," Loo agreed. "Also to be considered is the fact that for more than a hundred years you have never had a serious war, serious, that is, in that your land was not invaded, your industries destroyed."

"That's to our credit. We're a peace loving people."

Loo laughed abruptly. "You should tell that to the American Indians."

Hank scowled over at him. "What'd you mean by that Loo? That has all the elements of a nasty crack."

"Or tell it to the Mexicans. Isn't that where you got your whole South-west?"

Hank looked from Loo to Paco and back.

Paco brought out cigarettes and tossed one to each of the others. "Aren't these long Russian cigarettes the end? I heard somebody say that by the time the smoke got through all the filter, you'd lost the habit." He looked over at Hank. "Easy my friend, easy. On a trip like this it would be impossible not to continually be comparing East and West, dwelling continually on politics, the pros and cons of both sides. All of us are continually assimilating what we hear and see. Among other things, I note that on the newsstands there are no publications from western lands. Why? Because still, after fifty years, our Communist bureaucracy dare not allow its people to read what they will. I note, too, that the shops on 25th October Avenue are not all directed toward the Russian man on the street, unless he is paid unbelievably more than we have heard. Sable coats? Jewelery? Luxurious furniture? I begin to suspect that our Soviet friends are not quite so classless as Mr. Marx had in mind when he and Mr. Engels worked out the rough framework of the society of the future."

Loo said seriously, "Oh, there are a great many things of that type to notice here in the Soviet Union."

Hank had to grin. "Well, I'm glad you jokers still have open minds."

Paco waggled a finger negatively at him. "We've had open minds all along, my friend. It is yours that seems closed. In spite of the fact that I spent four years in your country I sometimes confess I don't understand you Americans. I think you are too immersed in your TV programs, your movies and your light fiction."

"I can feel myself being saddled up again," Hank complained. "All set for another riding."

Loo laughed softly, his perfect white teeth gleaming in his black face.

Paco said, "You seem to have the fictional good guys and bad guys outlook. And, in this world of controversy, you assume that you are the good guys, the heroes, and since that is so then the Soviets must be the bad guys. And, as in the movies, everything the good guys do is fine and everything the bad guys do, is evil. I sometimes think that if the Russians had developed a cure for cancer first you Americans would have refused to use it."

Hank had had enough. He said, "Look, Paco, there are two hundred million Americans. For you, or anyone else, to come along and try to lump that many people neatly together is pure silliness. You'll find every type of person that exists in the world in any country. The very tops of intelligence, and submorons living in institutions; the most highly educated of scientists, and men who didn't finish grammar school; you'll find saints, and gangsters; infant prodigies and juvenile delinquents; and millions upon millions of just plain ordinary people much like the people of Argentina, or England, or France or whatever. True enough, among all our two hundred million there are some mighty prejudiced people, some mighty backward ones, and some downright foolish ones. But if you think the United States got to the position she's in today through the efforts of a whole people who are foolish, then you're obviously pretty far off the beam yourself."

Paco was looking at him narrowly. "Accepted, friend Hank, and I apologize. That's quite the most effective outburst I've heard from you in this week we've known each other. It occurs to me that perhaps you are other than I first thought."

Oh, oh. Hank backtracked. He said, "Good grief, let's drop it."

Paco said, "Well, just to change the subject, gentlemen, there is one thing above all that I noted here in Leningrad."

"What was that?" Loo said.

"It's the only town I've ever seen where I felt an urge to kiss a cop," Paco said soulfully. "Did you notice? Half the traffic police in town are cute little blondes."

Loo rolled over. "A fascinating observation, but personally I am going to take a nap. Tonight it's the Red Arrow Express to Moscow and rest might be in order, particularly if the train has square wheels, burns wood and stops and repairs bridges all along the way, as I'm sure Hank believes."

Hank reached down, got hold of one of his shoes and heaved it.

"Missed!" Loo grinned.

The Red Arrow Express had round wheels, burned Diesel fuel and made the trip between Leningrad and Moscow overnight. In one respect, it was the most unique train ride Hank Kuran had ever had. The track contained not a single curve from the one city to the other. Its engineers must have laid the roadbed out with a ruler.

The cars like the rest of public transportation, were as comfortable as any Hank knew. Traveling second class, as the Progressive Tours pilgrims did, involved four people in a compartment for the night, with one exception. At the end of the car was a smaller compartment containing two bunks only.

The Intourist guide who had shepherded them around Leningrad took them to the train, saw them all safely aboard, told them another Intourist employee would pick them up at the station in Moscow.

It was late. Hank was assigned the two-bunk compartment. He put his glasses on the tiny window table, sat on the edge of the lower and began to pull off his shoes. He didn't look up when the door opened until a voice said, icebergs dominating the tone, "Just what are you doing in here?"

Hank blinked up at her. "Hello, Char. What?"

Char Moore snapped, "I said, what are you doing in my compartment?"

"Yours? Sorry, the conductor just assigned me here. Evidently there's been some mistake."

"I suggest you rectify it, Mr. Stevenson."

Out in the corridor a voice, heavy with Britishisms, complained plaintively, "Did you ever hear the loik? They put men and women into the same compartment. Oim expected to sleep with a loidy in the bunk under me."

Hank cleared his throat, didn't allow himself the luxury of a smile. He said, "I'll see what I can do, Char. Seems to me I did read somewhere that the Russkies see nothing wrong in putting strangers in the same sleeping compartment."

Char Moore stood there, saying nothing but breathing deeply enough to express American womanhood insulted.

"All right, all right," he said, retying his shoes and retrieving his glasses. "I didn't engineer this." He went looking for the conductor.

He was back, yawning by this time, fifteen minutes later. Char Moore was sitting on the side of the bottom bunk, sipping a glass of tea that she'd bought for a few kopecks from the portress. She looked up coolly as he entered, but her voice was more pleasant. "Get everything fixed?"

Hank said, "What bunk do you want, upper or lower?"

"That's not funny."

"It's not supposed to be." Hank pulled his bag from under the bunk and from it drew pajamas and his dressing gown. "Check with the rest of the tour if you want. The conductor couldn't care less. We were evidently assigned compartments by Intourist and where we were assigned we'll sleep. Either that or you can stand in the corridor all night. I'll be damned if I will."

"You don't have to swear," Char bit out testily. "What are we going to do about it?"

"I just told you what I was going to do." Taking up his things he opened the door. "I'll change in the men's dressing room."

"I'll lock the door," Char Moore snapped.

Hank grinned at her. "I'll bet that if you do the conductor either has a passkey or will break it down for me."

When he returned in slippers, nightrobe and pajamas, Char was in the upper berth, staring angrily at the compartment ceiling. There were no hooks or other facilities for hanging or storing clothes. She must have put all of her things back into her bag. Hank grinned inwardly, carefully folded his own pants and jacket over his suitcase before climbing into the bunk.

"Don't snore, do you?" he said conversationally.

No answer.

"Or walk in your sleep?"

"You're not funny, Mr. Stevenson."

"That's what I like about this country," Hank said. "Progressive. Way ahead of the West. Shucks, modesty is a reactionary capitalistic anachronism. Shove 'em all into bed together, that's what I always say." He laughed.

"Oh, shut up," Char said. But then she laughed, too. "Actually, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. We are rather Victorian about such things in the States."

Hank groaned. "There you are. If a railroad company at home suggested you spend the night in a compartment with a strange man, you'd sue them. But here in the promised land it's O.K."

After a short silence Char said, "Hank, why do you dislike the Soviet Union so much?"

"Why? Because I'm an American!"

She said so softly as to be almost inaudible, "I've known you for a week now. Somehow you don't really seem to be the type who would make that inadequate a statement."

Hank said "Look, Char. There's a cold war going on between the United States and her allies and the Soviet complex. I'm on our side. It's going to be one or the other."

"No it isn't, Hank. If it ever breaks out into hot war, it's going to be both. That is, unless the extraterrestrials add some new elements to the whole disgusting situation."

"Let's put it another way. Why are you so pro-Soviet?"

She raised herself on one elbow and scowled down over the edge of her bunk at him. Inside, Hank turned over twice to see the unbound red hair, the serious green eyes. Imagine looking at that face over the breakfast table for the rest of your life. The hell with South American senoritas.

Char said earnestly, "I'm not. Confound it, Hank, can't the world get any further than this cowboys and Indians relationship between nations? Our science and industry has finally developed to the point where the world could be a paradise. We've solved all the problems of production. We've conquered all the major diseases. We have the wonders of eternity before us—and look at us."

"Tell that to the Russkies and their pals. They're out for the works."

"Well, haven't we been?"

"The United States isn't trying to take over the world."

"No? Possibly not in the old sense of the word, but aren't we trying desperately to sponsor our type of government and social system everywhere? Frankly, I'm neither pro-West nor pro-Soviet. I think they're both wrong."

"Fine," Hank said. "What is your answer?"

She remained silent for a long time. Finally, "I don't claim to have an answer. But the world is changing like crazy. Science, technology, industrial production, education, population all are mushrooming. For us to claim that sweeping and basic changes aren't taking place in the Western nations is just nonsense. Our own country's institutions barely resemble the ones we had when you and I were children. And certainly the Soviet Union has changed and is changing from what it was thirty or forty years ago."

"Listen, Char," Hank said in irritation, "you still haven't come up with any sort of an answer to the cold war."

"I told you I hadn't any. All I say is that I'm sick of it. I can't remember so far back that there wasn't a cold war. And the more I consider it the sillier it looks. Currently the United States and her allies spend between a third and a half of their gross national product on the military—ha! the military!—and in fighting the Soviet complex in international trade."

"Well," Hank said, "I'm sick of it, too, and I haven't any answer either, but I'll be darned if I've heard the Russkies propose one. And just between you and me, if I had to choose between living Soviet style and our style, I'd choose ours any day."

Char said nothing.

Hank added flatly, "Who knows, maybe the coming of these Galactic Confederation characters will bring it all to a head."

She said nothing further and in ten minutes the soft sounds of her breathing had deepened to the point that Hank Kuran knew she slept. He lay there another half hour in the full knowledge that probably the most desirable woman he'd ever met was sleeping less than three feet away from him.

Leningrad had cushioned the first impression of Moscow for Henry Kuran. Although, if anything, living standards and civic beauty were even higher here in the capital city of world Communism.

They pulled into the Leningradsky Station on Komsomolskaya Square in the early morning to be met by Intourist guides and buses.

Hank sat next to Char Moore still feeling on the argumentative side after their discussion of the night before. He motioned with his head at some excavation work going on next to the station. "There you are. Women doing manual labor."

Char said, "I'm from the Western states, it doesn't impress me. Have you ever seen fruit pickers, potato diggers, or just about any type of itinerant harvest workers? There is no harder work and women, and children for that matter, do half of it at home."

He looked at the husky, rawboned women laborers working shoulder to shoulder with the men. "I still don't like it."

Char shrugged. "Who does? The sooner we devise machines to do all the drudgery the better off the world will be."

To his surprise, Hank found Moscow one of the most beautiful cities he had ever observed. Certainly the downtown area in the vicinity of the Kremlin compared favorably with any.

The buses whisked them down through Lermontovskaya Square, down Kirov Street to Novaya and then turned right. The Intourist guide made with a running commentary. There was the famous Bolshoi Theater and there Sverdlova Square, a Soviet cultural center.

Hank didn't know it then but they were avoiding Red Square. They circled it, one block away, and pulled onto Gorky Street and before a Victorian period building.

"The Grand Hotel," the guide announced, "where you will stay during your Moscow visit."

Half a dozen porters began manhandling their bags from the top of the bus. They were ushered into the lobby and assigned rooms. Russian hotel lobbies were a thing apart. No souvenir stands, no bellhops, no signs saying To the Bar, To the Barber Shop or to anything else. A hotel was a hotel, period.

Hank trailed Loo and Paco and three porters to the second floor and to the room they were assigned in common. Like the Astoria's rooms, in Leningrad, it was king-sized. In fact, it could easily have been divided into three chambers. There were four full sized beds, six arm chairs, two sofas, two vanity tables, a monstrous desk—and one wash bowl which gurgled when you ran water.

Paco, hands on hips, stared around. "A dance hall," he said. "Gentlemen, this room hasn't changed since some Grand Duke stayed in it before the revolution."

Loo, who had assumed his usual prone position on one of the beds, said, "From what I've heard about Moscow housing, you could get an average family in this amount of space."

Hank was stuffing clothes into a dresser drawer. "Now who's making with anti-Soviet comments?"

Paco laughed at him. "Have you ever seen some of the housing in the Harlem district in New York? You can rent a bed in a room that has possibly ten beds, for an eight-hour period. When your eight hours are up you roll out and somebody else rolls in. The beds are kept warm, three shifts every twenty-four hours."

Hank shook his head and muttered, "They call me Dobbin, I've been ridden so much."

Paco laughed and rubbed his hands together happily. "It's still early. We have nothing to do until lunch time. I suggest we sally forth and take a look at Russian womanhood. One never knows."

Loo said, "As an alternative, I suggest we rest until lunch."

Paco snorted. "A rightest-Trotskyite wrecker, and an imperialist war-monger to boot."

Loo said, dead panned, "Smile when you say that stranger."

Hank said, "Hey, wait a minute."

He went down the room to the far window and bug-eyed. One block away, at the end of Gorky Street, was Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral at the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the long drab length of the GUM department store opposite. But it wasn't these.

There on the square, nestled in the corner between St. Basil's and the mausoleum, squatted what Henry Kuran had never really expected to see, in spite of his assignment, in spite of news broadcasts, in spite of everything to the contrary. Boomerang shaped, resting on short stilts, six of them in all, a baby blue in color—an impossibly beautiful baby blue.

The spaceship.

Paco stood at one shoulder, Loo at the other.

For once there was no humor in Paco's words. "There it is," he said. "Our visitors from the stars."

"Possibly our teachers from the stars," Hank said huskily.

"Or our judges." Loo's voice was flat.

They stood there for another five minutes in silence. Loo said finally, "Undoubtedly our Intourist guides will take us nearer, if that's allowed, later during our stay. Meanwhile, my friends, I shall rest up for the occasion."

"Let's take our quick look at the city," Paco said to Hank. "Once the Intourist people take over they'll run our feet off. Frankly, I have little interest in where the first shot of the revolution was fired, the latest tractor factory, or where Rasputin got it in the neck. There are more important things."

"We know," Loo said from the bed. "Women."

"Right!"

Hank was wondering whether or not to leave the room. The Stilyagi were to contact him. Where? When? Obviously, he'd need their help. He had no idea whatsoever on how to penetrate to the Interplanetary emissaries.

He spoke Russian. Fine. So what? Could he simply march up to the spacecraft and knock on the door? Or would he make himself dangerously conspicuous by just getting any closer than he now was to the craft?

As he stood now, he felt he was comparatively safe. He was sure the Russkies had marked him down as a rather ordinary American. Heavens knows, he'd worked hard enough at the role. A simple, average tourist, a little on the square side, and not even particularly articulate.

However, he wasn't going to accomplish much by remaining here in this room. He doubted that the Stilyagi would get in touch with him either by phone or simply knocking at the door.

"O.K., Paco," he said. "Let's go. In search of the pin-up girl—Moscow style."

They walked down to the lobby and started for the door.

One of the Intourist guides who had brought them from the railroad station stood to one side of the stairs. "Going for a walk, gentlemen? I suggest you stroll up Gorky Street, it's the main shopping center."

Paco said, "How about going over into Red Square to see the spaceship?"

The guide shrugged. "I don't believe the guards will allow you to get too near. It would be undesirable to bother the Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union."

That was one way of wording it, Hank thought glumly. The Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union. Not to the Earth, but to the Soviet Union. He wondered what the neutrals in such countries as India were thinking.

But at least there were no restrictions on Paco and him.

They strolled up Gorky Street, jam packed with fellow pedestrians. Shoppers, window-shoppers, men on the prowl for girls, girls on the prowl for men, Ivan and his wife taking the baby for a stroll, street cleaners at the endless job of keeping Moscow's streets the neatest in the world.

Paco pointed out this to Hank, Hank pointed out that to Paco. Somehow it seemed more than a visit to a western European nation. This was Moscow. This was the head of the Soviet snake.

And then Hank had to laugh inwardly at himself as two youngsters, running along playing tag in a grown-up world of long legs and stolid pace, all but tripped him up. Head of a snake it might be, but Moscow's people looked astonishingly like those of Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon.

"How do you like those two, coming now?" Paco said.

Those two coming now consisted of two better than averagely dressed girls who would run somewhere in their early twenties. A little too much make-up by western standards, and clumsily applied.

"Blondes," Paco said soulfully.

"They're all blondes here," Hank said.

"Wonderful, isn't it?"

The girls smiled at them in passing and Paco turned to look after, but they didn't stop. Hank and Paco went on.

It didn't take Hank long to get onto Paco's system. It was beautifully simple. He merely smiled widely at every girl that went by. If she smiled back, he stopped and tried to start a conversation with her.

He got quite a few rebuffs but—Hank remembered an old joke—on the other hand he got quite a bit of response.

Before they had completed a block and a half of strolling, they were standing on a corner, trying to talk with two of Moscow's younger set—female variety. Here again, Paco was a wonder. His languages were evidently Spanish, English and French but he was in there pitching with a language the full vocabulary of which consisted of Da and Neit so far as he was concerned.

Hank stood back a little, smiling, trying to stay in character, but in amused dismay at the other's aggressive abilities.

Paco said, "Listen, I think I can get these two to come up to the room. Which one do you like?"

Hank said, "If they'll come up to the room, then they're professionals."

Paco grinned at him. "I'm a professional, too. A lawyer by trade. It's just a matter of different professions."

A middle-aged pedestrian, passing by, said to the girls in Russian, "Have you no shame before the foreign tourists?"

They didn't bother to answer. Paco went back to his attempt to make a deal with the taller of the two.

The smaller, who sported astonishingly big and blue eyes, said to Hank in Russian, "You're too good to associate with metrofanushka girls?"

Hank frowned puzzlement. "I don't speak Russian," he said.

She laughed lightly, almost a giggle, and, in the same low voice her partner was using on Paco, said, "I think you do, Mr. Kuran. In the afternoon, tomorrow, avoid whatever tour the Intourist people wish to take you on and wander about Sovietska Park." She giggled some more. The world-wide epitome of a girl being picked up on the street.

Hank took her in more closely. Possibly twenty-five years of age. The skirt she was wearing was probably Russian, it looked sturdy and durable, but the sweater was one of the new American fabrics. Her shoes were probably western too, the latest flared heel effect. A typical stilyagi or metrofanushka girl, he assumed. Except for one thing—her eyes were cool and alert, intelligent beyond those of a street pickup.

Paco said, "What do you think, Hank? This one will come back to the hotel with me."

"Romeo, Romeo," Hank sighed, "wherefore do thou think thou art?"

Paco shrugged. "What's the difference? Buenos Aires, New York, Moscow. Women are women."

"And men are evidently men," Hank said. "You do what you want."

"O.K., friend. Do you mind staying out of the room for a time?"

"Don't worry about me, but you'll have to get rid of Loo, and he hasn't had his eighteen hours sleep yet today."

Paco had his girl by the arm. "I'll roll him into the hall. He'll never wake up."

Hank's girl made a moue at him, shrugged as though laughing off the fact that she had been rejected, and disappeared into the crowds. Hank stuck his hands in his pockets and went on with his stroll.

The contact with the underground had been made.

Maintaining his front as an American tourist he wandered into several stores, picked up some amber brooches at a bargain rate, fingered through various books in English in an international bookshop. That was one thing that hit hard. The bookshops were packed. Prices were remarkably low and people were buying. In fact, he'd never seen a country so full of people reading and studying. The park benches were loaded with them, they read as the rode on streetcar and bus, they read as they walked along the street. He had an uneasy feeling that the jet-set kids were a small minority, that the juvenile delinquent problem here wasn't a fraction what it was in the West.

He'd expected to be followed. In fact, that had puzzled him when he first was given this unwanted assignment by Sheridan Hennessey. How was he going to contact this so-called underground if he was watched the way he had been led to believe Westerners were?

But he recalled their conducted tour of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The Intourist guide had started off with twenty-five persons and had clucked over them like a hen all afternoon. In spite of her frantic efforts to keep them together, however, she returned to the Astoria Hotel that evening with eight missing—including Hank and Loo who had wandered off to get a beer.

The idea of the KGB putting tails on the tens of thousands of tourists that swarmed Moscow and Leningrad, became a little on the ridiculous side. Besides, what secret does a tourist know, or what secrets could he discover?

At any rate, Hank found no interference in his wanderings. He deliberately avoided Red Square and its spaceship, taking no chances on bringing himself to attention. Short of that locality, he wandered freely.

At noon they ate at the Grand and the Intourist guide outlined the afternoon program which involved a general sightseeing tour ranging from the University to the Park of Rest and Culture, Moscow's equivalent of Coney Island.

Loo said, "That all sounds very tiring, do we have time for a nap before leaving?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Motlamelle," the guide told him.

Paco shook his head. "I've seen a university, and I've seen a sport stadium and I've seen statues and monuments. I'll sit this one out."

"I think I'll lie this one out," Loo said. He complained plaintively to Hank. "You know what happened to me this morning, just as I was napping up in our room?"

"Yes," Hank said, "I was with our Argentine Casanova when he picked her up."

Hank took the conducted tour with the rest. If he was going to beg off the next day, he'd be less conspicuous tagging along on this one. Besides it gave him the lay of the land.

And he took the morning trip the next day, the automobile factories on the outskirts of town. It had been possibly fifteen years since Hank had been through Detroit but he doubted greatly that automation had developed as far in his own country as it seemed to have here. Or, perhaps, this was merely a showplace. But he drew himself up at that thought. That was one attitude the Western world couldn't afford—deprecating Soviet progress. This was the very thing that had led to such shocks as the launching of the early Sputniks. Underestimate your adversary and sooner or later you paid for it.

The Soviets had at long last built up a productive machine as great as any. Possibly greater. In sheer tonnage they were turning out more gross national product than the West. This was no time to be underestimating them.

All this was a double interest to a field man in Morton Twombly's department, working against the Soviets in international trade. He was beginning to understand at least one of the reasons why the Commies could sell their products at such ridiculously low prices. Automation beyond that of the West. In the Soviet complex the labor unions were in no position to block the introduction of ultra-efficient methods, and featherbedding was unheard of. If a Russian worker's job was automated out from under him, he shifted to a new plant, a new job, and possibly even learned a new trade. The American worker's union, to the contrary, did its best to save the job.

Hank Kuran remembered reading, a few months earlier, of a British textile company which had attempted to introduce a whole line of new automation equipment. The unions had struck, and the company had to give up the project. What happened to the machinery? It was sold to China!

Following the orders of his underground contact, he begged out of the afternoon tour, as did half a dozen of the others. Sightseeing was as hard on the feet in Moscow as anywhere else.

After lunch he looked up Sovietska Park on his tourist map of the city. It was handy enough. A few blocks up Gorky Street.

It turned out to be typical. Well done so far as fountains, monuments and gardens were concerned. Well equipped with park benches. In the early afternoon it was by no means empty, but, on the other hand not nearly so filled as he'd noticed the parks to be the evening before.

Hank stopped at one of the numerous cold drink stands where for a few kopecks you could get raspberry syrup fizzed up with soda water. While he sipped it, a teen-ager came up beside him and said in passable English, "Excuse me, are you a tourist? Do you speak English?"

This had happened before. Another kid practicing his school language.

"That's right," Hank said.

The boy said, "You aren't a ham, are you?" He brought some cards from an inner pocket. "I'm UA3-KAR."

For a moment Hank looked at him blankly, and then he recognized the amateur radio call cards the other was displaying. "Oh, a ham. Well, no, but I have a cousin who is."

Two more youngsters came up. "What's his call?"

Hank didn't remember that. They all adjourned to a park bench and little though he knew about the subject, international amateur radio was discussed in detail. In fifteen minutes he was hemmed in by a dozen or so and had about decided he'd better make his excuses and circulate around making himself available to the stilyagi outfit. He was searching for an excuse to shake them when the one sitting next to him reverted to Russian.

"We're clear now, Henry Kuran."

Hank said, "I'll be damned. I hadn't any idea—"

The other brushed aside trivialities. Looking at him more closely, Hank could see he was older than first estimate. Possibly twenty-two or so. Darker than most of the others, heavy-set, sharp and impatient.

"You can call me Georgi," he said. "These others will prevent outsiders from bothering us. Now then, we've been told you Americans want some assistance. What? And why should we give it to you?"

Hank said, worriedly, "Haven't you some place we could go? Where I could meet one of your higher-ups? This is important."

"Otherwise, I wouldn't be here," Georgi said impatiently. "For that matter there is no higher-up. We don't have ranks; we're a working democracy. And I'm afraid the day of the secret room in some cellar is past. With housing what it is, if there was an empty cellar in Moscow a family would move in. And remember, all buildings are State owned and operated. I'm afraid you'll have to tell your story here. Now, what is it you want?"

"I want an opportunity to meet the Galactic Confederation emissaries."

"Why?"

"To give them our side, the Western side, of the ... well, the controversy between us and the Soviet complex. We want an opportunity to have our say before they make any permanent treaties."

Georgi considered that. "We thought it was probably something similar," he muttered. "What do you think it will accomplish?"

"At least a delaying action. If the extraterrestrials throw their weight, their scientific progress, into the balance on the side of the Soviet complex, the West will have lost the cold war. Every neutral in the world will jump on the bandwagon. International trade, sources of raw materials, will be a thing of the past. Without a shot being fired, we'd become second-rate powers overnight."

Georgi said nothing for a long moment. A new youngster had drifted up to the group but one of those on the outskirts growled something at him and he went off again. Evidently, Hank decided, all of this dozen-odd cluster of youngsters were connected with the jet-set underground.

"All right, you want us to help you in the conflict between the Soviet government and the West," Georgi said. "Why should we?"

Hank frowned at him. "You're the anti-government movement. You're revolutionists and want to overthrow the Soviet government."

The other said impatiently, "Don't read something into our organization that isn't here. We don't exist for your benefit, but our own."

"But you wish to overthrow the Soviets and establish a democratic—"

Georgi was waggling an impatient hand. "That word democratic has been so misused this past half century that it's become all but meaningless. Look here, we wish to overthrow the present Soviet government, but that doesn't mean we expect to establish one modeled to yours. We're Russians. Our problems are Russian ones. Most of them you aren't familiar with—any more than we're familiar with your American ones."

"However, you want to destroy the Soviets," Hank pursued.

"Yes," Georgi growled, "but that doesn't necessarily mean that we wish you to win this cold war, as the term goes. That is, just because we're opposed to the Soviet government doesn't mean we like yours. But you make a point. If the Galactic Confederation gives all-out support to the Soviet bureaucracy it might strengthen it to the point where they could remain in office indefinitely."

Hank pressed the advantage. "Right. You'd never overthrow them then."

"On the other hand," Georgi muttered uncomfortably, "we're not interested in giving you Americans an opportunity that would enable you to collapse the whole fabric of this country and its allies."

"Look here," Hank said. "In the States we seem to know surprisingly little about your movement. Just what do you expect to accomplish?"

"To make it brief, we wish to enjoy the product of the sacrifices of the past fifty years. If you recall your Marx"—he twisted his face here in wry amusement—"the idea was that the State was to wither away once Socialism was established. Instead of withering away, it has become increasingly strong. This was explained by the early Bolsheviks in a fairly reasonable manner. Socialism presupposes a highly industrialized economy. It's not possible in a primitive nor even a feudalistic society. So our Communist bureaucracy remained in the saddle through a period of transition. The task was to industrialize the Soviet countries in a matter of decades where it had taken the Capitalist nations a century or two."

Georgi shrugged. "I've never heard of a governing class giving up its once acquired power of its own accord, no matter how incompetent they might be."

Hank said, "I wouldn't call the Soviet government incompetent."

"Then you'd be wrong," the other said. "Progress had been made but often in spite of the bureaucracy, not because of it. In the early days it wasn't so obvious, but as we develop the rule of the political bureaucrat becomes increasingly a hindrance. Politicians can't operate industries and they can't supervise laboratories. To the extent our scientist and technicians are interfered with by politicians, to that extent we are held up in our progress. Surely you've heard of the Lysenko matter?"

"He was the one who evolved the anti-Mendelian theory of genetics, fifteen or twenty years ago."

"Correct," Georgi snorted. "Acquired characteristics could be handed down by heredity. It took the Academy of Agricultural Science at least a decade to dispose of him. Why? Because his theories fitted into Stalin's political beliefs." The underground spokesman snorted again.

Hank had the feeling they were drifting from the subject. "Then you want to overthrow the Communist bureaucracy?"

"Yes, but that is only part of the story. Overthrowing it without something to replace the bureaucracy is a negative approach. We have no interest in a return to Czarist Russia, even if that were possible, and it isn't. We want to profit by what has happened in these years of ultra-sacrifice, not to destroy everything. The day of rule by politicians is antiquated, we look forward to the future." He seemed to switch subjects. "Do you remember Djilas' book which he wrote in one of Tito's prisons, "The New Class"?"

"Vaguely. I read the reviews. It was a best seller in the States some time ago."

Georgi made with his characteristic snort. "It was a best seller here—in underground circles. At any rate, that explains much. Our bureaucracy, no matter what its ideals might have been to begin with, has developed into a new class of its own. Russia sacrifices to surpass the West—but our bureaucrats don't. In Lenin's day the commissar was paid the same as the average worker, but today we have bureaucrats as wealthy as Western millionaires."

Hank said, "Of course, these are your problems. I don't pretend to have too clear a picture of them. However, it seems to me we have a mutual enemy. Right at this moment it appears that they are to receive some support that will strengthen them. I suggest you co-operate with me in hopes they'll be thwarted."

For the first time a near smile appeared on the young Russian's face. "A ludicrous situation. We have here a Russian revolutionary organization devoted to the withering away the Russian Communist State. To gain its ends, it co-operates with a Capitalist country's agent." His grin broadened. "I suspect that neither Nicolai Lenin nor Karl Marx ever pictured such contingencies."

Hank said, "I wouldn't know I'm not up on my Marxism. I'm afraid that when I went to school academic circles weren't inclined in that direction." He returned the Russian's wry smile.

Which only set the other off again. "Academic circles!" he snorted. "Sterile in both our countries. All professors of economics in the Soviet countries are Marxists. On the other hand, no American professor would admit to this. Coincidence? Suppose an American teacher was a convinced Marxist. Would he openly and honestly teach his beliefs? Suppose a Russian wasn't? Would he?" Georgi slapped his knee with a heavy hand and stood up. "I'll speak to various others. We'll let you know."

Hank said, "Wait. How long is this going to take? And can you help me if you want to? Where are these extraterrestrials?"

Georgi looked down at him. "They're in the Kremlin. How closely guarded we don't know, but we can find out."

"The Kremlin," Hank said. "I was hoping they stayed in their own ship."

"Rumor has it that they're quartered in the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. We'll contact you later—perhaps." He stuck his hands in his pockets and strode away, in all appearance just one more pedestrian without anywhere in particular to go.

One of the younger boys, the ham who had first approached Hank, smiled and said, "Perhaps we can talk a bit more of radio?"

"Yeah," Hank muttered, "Swell."

The next development came sooner than Henry Kuran had expected. In fact, before the others returned from their afternoon tour of the city. Hank was sprawled in one of the king-sized easy-chairs, turning what little he had to work on over in his mind. The principal decisions to make were, first, how long to wait on the assistance of the stilyagi, and, if that wasn't forthcoming, what steps to take on his own. The second prospect stumped him. He hadn't the vaguest idea what he could accomplish singly.

He wasn't even sure where the space aliens were. The Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, Georgi had said. But was that correct, and, if so, where was the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets and how did you get into it? For that matter, how did you get inside the Kremlin walls?

Under his breath he cursed Sheridan Hennessey. Why had he allowed himself to be dragooned into this? By all criteria it was the desperate clutching of a drowning man for a straw. He had no way to know, for instance, if he did reach the space emissaries, that he could even communicate with them.

He caught himself wishing he was back in Peru arguing with hesitant South Americans over the relative values of American and Soviet complex commodities—and then he laughed at himself.

There was a knock at the door.

Hank came wearily to his feet, crossed and opened it.

She still wore too much make-up, the American sweater and the flared heel shoes. And her eyes were still cool and alert. She slid past him, let her eyes go around the room quickly. "You are alone?" she said in Russian, but it was more a statement than question.

Hank closed the door behind them. He scowled at her, put a finger to his lips and then went through an involved pantomime to indicate looking for a microphone. He raised his eyebrows at her.

She laughed and shook her head. "No microphones."

"How do you know?"

"We know. We have contacts here in the hotel. If the KGB had to put microphones in the rooms of every tourist in Moscow, they'd have to increase their number by ten times. In spite of your western ideas to the contrary, it just isn't done. There are exceptions, of course, but there has to be some reason for it."

"Perhaps I'm an exception." Hank didn't like this at all. The C.I.A. men had been of the opinion that the KGB was once again thoroughly checking on every foreigner.

"If the KGB is already onto you, Henry Kuran, then you might as well give up. Your mission is already a failure."

"I suppose so. Will you have a chair? Can I offer you a drink? My roommate has a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka which he brought from the boat."

There was an amused light in her eyes even as she shook her head. "Your friend Paco is quite a man—so I understand. But no, I am here for business." She took one of the armchairs and Hank sank into another opposite her.