The starship _Lucky Lady_ thundered out of overdrive half a million
miles from Earth, and began the long steady ion-drive glide at
Earthnorm grav toward the orbiting depot. In his second-class cabin
aboard the starship, the man whose papers said he was Major Abner
Harris of the Interstellar Development Corps stared at his face in the
mirror. He wanted to make sure for the hundredth time that there was no
sign of where his tendrils once had been.
He smiled; and the even-featured, undistinguished face they had put
on him drew back, lips rising in the corners, cheeks tightening, neat
white teeth momentarily on display. Major Harris scowled, and the
face darkened.
It behaved well. The synthetic white skin acted as if it were his own.
The surgeons back on Darruu had done a superb job on him.
They had removed the fleshy four-inch-long tendrils that sprouted at
a Darruui's temples; they had covered his deep golden skin with an
overlay of convincingly Terran white, and grafted it so skilfully that
by now it had become his real skin. Contact lenses turned his eyes
from red to blue-gray. Hormone treatments had caused hair to sprout
on head and body, where none had been before. They had not meddled
with his internal plumbing, and there he remained alien, with the
Darruui digestive organ where a Terran had so many incredible feet of
intestine, with the double heart and the sturdy liver just back of his
three lungs.
Inside he was alien. Behind the walls of his skull, he was Aar Khiilom
of the city of Helasz--a Darruui of the highest caste, a Servant of the
Spirit. Externally, though, he was Major Abner Harris. He knew Major
Harris' biography in great detail.
Born 2520, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, Earth. Age now,
42--with a good hundred years of his lifespan left. Attended Western
Reserve University, studying galactography; graduated '43. Entered the
Interstellar Redevelopment Corps '46, commissioned '50, now a Major.
Missions to Altair VII, Sirius IX, Procyon II, Alpheratz IV. Unmarried.
Parents killed in highway jet-crash in '44; no known relatives. Height
five feet ten, weight 220, color fair, retinal index point-oh-three.
Major Harris was visiting Earth on vacation. He was to spend eight
months on Earth before reassignment to his next planetary post.
Eight months, thought the one who called himself Major Harris, would be
ample time for Major Harris to lose himself in the billions of Earth
and carry out the purposes for which he had been sent here.
* * * * *
The _Lucky Lady_ was on the last lap of her journey. Harris had boarded
her on Alpheratz IV, after having been shipped there from Darruu by
private warpship. For the past three weeks, while the giant vessel
had slipped through the sleek gray tunnel in the continuum that was
its overdrive channel, Harris had been learning to walk at Earthnorm
gravity.
Darruu was a large world--radius 11,000 miles--and though its density
was not as great as Earth's, still the gravitational attraction was
half again as intense. Darruu's gravity was 1.5 Earthnorm. Or, as
Harris had thought of it in the days when his mind centered not on
Earth but on Darruu, Earth's gravity was .67 Darruunorm. Either way, it
meant that his muscles would be functioning in a field two-thirds as
strong as the one they had developed in. He could use the excuse that
he had spent most of his time on heavy planets, and that would explain
away some of his awkwardness.
But not all. A native Earther, no matter how long he stays on a heavy
world, still knows how to cope with Earthnorm gravity. Harris had to
learn that. He _did_ learn it, painstakingly, during the three weeks of
overdrive travel toward the system of Sol.
Now the journey was almost complete. All that remained was the transfer
from the starship to an Earth shuttle, and then he could begin life as
an Earthman.
Earth hung outside the main viewport twenty feet from Harris's
cabin. He stared at it. A great green ball of a world, with two huge
continents here, another land-mass there, a giant moon moving in slow
procession around it, keeping one pockmarked face eternally staring
inward, the other glaring at outer space like a single beady bright
eye.
The sight made Harris homesick.
Darruu was nothing like this. Darruu, from space, seemed to be a giant
red fruit, covered over by the crimson mist that was the upper layer of
its atmosphere. Beneath that could be discerned the great blue seas and
the two hemisphere-large continents of Darraa and Darroo.
And the moons, Harris thought nostalgically. Seven glistening blank
faces like coins in the sky, each at its own angle to the ecliptic,
each taking its place in the sky nightly like a gem moved by clockwork.
And the Mating of the Moons, when the seven came together once a year
in a fiercely radiant diadem that filled half the sky--
Angrily he cut the train of thought.
_You're an Earthman. Forget Darruu._
A voice on a speaker overhead said, "Please return to your cabins,
ladies and gentlemen. In eleven minutes we will come to a rest at the
main spaceborne depot. Passengers intending to transfer here please
notify their area steward."
Harris returned to his cabin while the voice repeated the statement in
other languages. Earth still spoke more than a dozen major tongues,
which surprised him; Darruu had reached linguistic homogeneity three
thousand years or more ago.
Minutes ticked by; at last came the word that the _Lucky Lady_ had
ended its ion-drive cruise and was tethered to the orbital satellite.
Harris left his cabin for the last time and headed downramp to the
designated room on D Deck where outgoing passengers were assembling.
"Your baggage will be shipped across. You don't have to worry about
that."
Harris nodded. His baggage was important.
More than three hundred of the passengers were leaving ship here.
Harris was herded along with the others through an airlock. Several
dozen ungainly little ferries hovered just outside, linked to the
huge starliner by connecting tubes. Harris entered a swaying tube,
crossed over, and found a seat in the ferry. Minutes later, he was
repeating the process in the other direction, as the ferry unloaded its
passengers into the main airlock of Orbiting Station Number One.
Another voice boomed, "_Lucky Lady_ passengers continuing on to Earth
report to Routing Channel Four. _Lucky Lady_ passengers continuing on
to Earth report to Routing Channel Four. Passengers transhipping to
other starlines should go to the nearest routing desk at once."
At Routing Channel Four, Harris was called upon to produce his papers.
He handed over the little fabrikoid portfolio; a spaceport official
riffled sleepily through it and handed it back without a word.
As he boarded the Earth-Orbiter shuttle, an attractive stewardess
handed him a multigraphed sheet of paper which contained information of
a sort a tourist was likely to want to know. Harris scanned it quickly.
"_The Orbiting Station is located eighty thousand miles from Earth.
It is locked in a twenty-four hour orbit that keeps it hovering
approximately above Quito, Ecuador, South America. During a year the
Orbiting Station serves an average of 8,500,000 travellers_--"
He finished reading the sheet and put it down. He eyed his fellow
passengers in the Earthbound shuttle. There were about fifty of them.
For all he knew, five were disguised Darruui like himself. Or they
might be enemies--Medlins--likewise in disguise. Perhaps he was
surrounded by agents of Earth's own intelligence corps who had already
penetrated his disguise.
Trouble lay on every hand. Inwardly Major Harris felt calm, though
there was the faint twinge of homesickness for Darruu that he knew he
would never be able entirely to erase.
The shuttle banked into a steep deceleration curve. Artificial grav
aboard the ship remained constant, of course. Earth drew near.
Landing came.
* * * * *
The shuttle hung over the skin of the landing-field for thirty seconds,
then dropped; a gantry crane shuffled out to support the ship, and
buttress-legs sprang from the sides of the hull. A steward's voice
said, "Passengers will please assemble at the airlock in single file."
They assembled. A green omnibus waited outside on the field, and the
fifty of them filed in. Harris found a seat by the window and stared
out across the broad field. A yellow sun was in the blue sky. The air
was cold; he shivered involuntarily and drew his cloak around him for
warmth.
"Cold?" asked the man who shared his seat with him.
"A bit."
"That's odd. Nice balmy spring day like this, you'd think everybody
would be enjoying the weather."
Harris grinned. "I've been on some pretty hot worlds the last ten
years. Anything under ninety degrees and I start shivering, now."
The other chuckled and said, "Must be near eighty in the shade today."
"I'll be accustomed to it again before long," Harris said. "Once an
Earthman, always an Earthman."
He made a mental note to carry out a trifling adjustment on his body
thermostat. His skin was lined with sub-miniaturized heating and
refrigerating units--just one of the useful modifications the surgeons
had given him.
Darruu's mean temperature was 120 degrees, on the scale used by the
Earthers. When it dropped to 80, Darruui cursed the cold. It was 80
now, and he was uncomfortably cold. He would have to stay that way
for most of the day, at least, until in a moment of privacy he could
make the necessary adjustments. Around him, the Earthers seemed to be
perspiring and feeling discomfort because of the heat.
The bus filled finally, and spurted across the field to a high domed
building of gleaming steel and green plastic. The driver said, "First
stop is customs. Have your papers ready."
Inside, Harris found his baggage already waiting for him at a
counter labelled HAM-HAT. There were two suitcases, both of them with
topological secret compartments. He surrendered his passport and, when
told to do so, pressed his thumb to the opener-plate. The suitcases
sprang open. The customs man poked through them perfunctorily, nodded,
said, "Anything to declare?"
"Nothing."
"Okay. Close 'em up."
Harris locked the suitcases again, and the customs official briefly
touched a tracer-stamp to them. It left no visible imprint, but the
photonic scanners at every door would be watching for the radiations,
and no one with an un-stamp could get through the electronic barriers.
"Next stop is Immigration, Major."
At Immigration they studied his passport briefly, noted that he was
a government employee, and passed him along to Health. Here he felt
a moment of alarm; about one out of every fifty incoming passengers
from a starship was detained for a comprehensive medical exam, and if
the finger fell upon him the game was up right here. Ten seconds in
front of a fluoroscope would tell them that nobody with that kind of
skeletal structure had ever been born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He got through with nothing more than a rudimentary checkup. At the
last desk his passport was stamped with a re-entry visa, and the clerk
said, "You haven't been on Earth for a long time, eh, Major?"
"Not in ten years. Hope things haven't changed too much."
"The women are still the same, anyway." The clerk shuffled Harris'
papers together, stuck them back in the portfolio, and handed them to
him. "Everything's in order. Go straight ahead and out the door to your
left."
Harris thanked him and moved along, gripping one suitcase in each hand.
A month ago, at the beginning of his journey, the suitcases had seemed
heavy to him. But that had been on Darruu; here they weighed only
two-thirds as much. He carried them jauntily.
_Soon it will be spring on Darruu_, he thought. The red-leaved jasaar
trees would blossom and their perfume would fill the air.
With an angry inner scowl he blanked out the thought. He was Major
Abner Harris, late of Cincinnati, here on Earth for eight months'
vacation.
He knew his orders. He was to establish residence, avoid detection,
and in the second week of his stay make contact with the chief Darruui
agent on Earth. Further instructions would come from him.