“. . . Remember,” William said, as they parted in the corridor outside the lounge, after the meal. “Come in and see me after you’ve finished with Hendrik, Donal. I’ll be glad to help you if I can.” And with a smile, and a nod, he turned away.

Donal and Galt went off down the narrow corridor that forced them to walk one behind the other. Following the thick shoulders of the older man, Donal was surprised to hear him ask: “Well, what do you think of them?”

“Sir?” said Donal. Hesitating, he chose what he took to be the safest subject. “I’m a little surprised about the girl.”

“Anea?” said Galt, stopping before a door marked with the number nineteen.

“I thought a Select of Kultis would be—” Donal stopped, honestly at a loss, “more . . . more in control of herself.”

“She’s very healthy, very normal, very intelligent—but those are only potentialities,” retorted the marshal, almost gruffly. “What did you expect?”

He threw open the door, ushered them both in, and closed the door firmly behind them. When he turned around, there was a harder, more formal note to his voice.

“All right now,” he said, sharply, “what’s all this about a letter?”

Donal took a deep breath. He had tried hard to read Galt’s character during the course of the dinner—and he staked everything now in the honesty of his answer, on what he thought he had seen there.

“No letter, sir,” he said. “To the best of my knowledge, my father never met you in his life.”

“Thought as much,” said Galt. “All right—what’s it all about, then?” He crossed to a desk on the other side of the room, took something from a drawer, and when he turned about Donal was astonished to find him filling an antique pipe with tobacco.

“That Anea, sir,” he said. “I never met such a fool in my life.” And he told, fully and completely, the story of the episode in the corridor. Galt half-sat on the edge of the desk, the pipe in his mouth now, and alight, puffing little clouds of white smoke which the ventilating system whisked away the second they were formed.

“I see,” he said, when Donal had finished. “I’m inclined to agree with you. She is a fool. And just what sort of insane idiot do you consider yourself?”

“I, sir?” Donal was honestly astonished.

“I mean you, boy,” said Galt, taking the pipe out of his mouth. “Here you are, still damp from school, and sticking your nose into a situation a full planetary government’d hesitate at.” He stared in frank amazement at Donal. “Just what did you think—what did you figure . . . hell, boy, what did you plan to get out of it?”