“Takver, I don’t want to go to Urras!”

“Yes, you do; you know you do. Though I’m not sure I know why.”

“Well, of course I’d like to meet some of the physicists… And see the laboratories at Ieu Eun where they’ve been experimenting with light.” He looked shamefaced as he said it.

“It’s your right to do so,” Takver said with fierce determination. “If it’s part of your work, you ought to do it.”

“It would help keep the Revolution alive—on both sides—wouldn’t it?” he said. “What a crazy idea! Like Tirin’s play, only backwards. I’m to go subvert the archists… Well, it would at least prove to them that Anarres exists. They talk with us on the radio, but I don’t think they really believe in us. In what we are.”

“If they did, they might be scared. They might come and blow us right out of the sky, if you really convinced them.”

“I don’t think so. I might make a little revolution in their physics again, but not in their opinions. It’s here, here, that I can affect society, even though here they won’t pay attention to my physics. You’re quite right; now that we’ve talked about it, we must do it.” There was a pause. He said, “I wonder what kind of physics the other races do.”

“What other races?”

“The aliens. People from Hain and other solar systems. There are two alien Embassies on Urras, Hain and Terra. The Hainish invented the interstellar drive Urras uses now. I suppose they’d give it to us, too, if we were willing to ask for it. It would be interesting to…” He did not finish.

After another long pause he turned to her and said in a changed, sarcastic tone, “And what would you do while I went visiting the propertarians?”

“Go to the Sorruba coast with the girls, and live a very peaceful life as a fish-lab technician. Until you come back.”

“Come back? Who knows if I could come back?”

She met his gaze straight on. “What would prevent you?”

“Maybe the Urrasti. They might keep me. No one there is free to come and go, you know. Maybe our own people. They might prevent me from landing. Some of them in PDC threatened that, today. Rulag was one of them.”

“She would. She only knows denial. How to deny the possibility of coming home.”

“That is quite true. That says it completely,” he said, settling back again and looking at Takver with contemplative admiration. “But Rulag isn’t the only one, unfortunately. To a great many people, anyone who went to Urras and tried to come back would simply be a traitor, a spy.”

“What would they actually do about it?”

“Well, if they persuaded Defense of the danger, they could shoot down the ship.”

“Would Defense be that stupid?”

“I don’t think so. But anybody outside Defense could make explosives with blasting powder and blow up the ship on the ground. Or, more likely, attack me once I was outside the ship. I think that’s a definite possibility. It should be included in a plan to make a round-trip tour of the scenic areas of Urras.”