"Yes, it is."

"Have you figured out how you are going to get a hundred thousand people inboard the New Frontiers without tipping your hand? You can't trust your own people, you know that."

"I know. The present situation is a temporary expedient while we work it out."

"And I'm the man for the job. I've got to be, I'm the only agent on the loose that either one of you can afford to trust. Now listen-"

Eight minutes later Ford was nodding his head slowly and saying, "It might work. It might. Anyway, you start your preparations. I'll have a letter of credit waiting for you at Goddard."

"Can you cover your tracks on that? I can't flash a letter of credit from the Administrator; people would wonder."

"Credit me with some intelligence. By the time it reaches you it will appear to be a routine banking transaction."

"Sorry. Now how can I get through to you when I need to?"

"Oh, yes-note this code combination." Ford recited it slowly. "That puts you through to my desk without relay. No, don't write it down; memorize it."

"And how can I talk to Zack Barstow?

"Call me and I'll hook you in. You can't call him directly unless you can arrange a sensitive circuit."

"Even if I could, I can't cart a sensitive around with me. Well, cheerio-I'm clearing."

"Good luck!"

Lazarus left the phone booth with restrained haste and hurried back to reclaim his hired ship. He did not know enough about current police practice to guess whether or not the High Chief Provost had traced the call to the Administrator; he simply took it for granted because he himself would have done so in the Provosts' shoes. Therefore the nearest available proctor was probably stepping on his heels-time to move, time to mess up the trail a little.

He took off again and headed west, staying in the local, uncontrolled low level until he reached a cloud bank that walled the western horizon. He then swung back and cut air for Kansas City, staying carefully under the speed limit and flying as low as local traffic regulations permitted. At Kansas City he turned his ship in to the local U-push-it agency and flagged a ground taxi, which carried him down the controlway to Joplin. There he boarded a local jet bus from St. Louis without buying a ticket first, thereby insuring that his flight would not be recorded until the bus's trip records were turned in on the west coast.

Instead of worrying he spent the time making plans.

One hundred thousand people with an average mass of a hundred and fifty-no, make it a hundred and sixty pounds, Lazarus reconsidered-a hundred and sixty each made a load of sixteen million pounds, eight thousand tons. The I Spy could boost such a load against one gravity but she would be as logy as baked beans, It was out of the question anyhow; people did not stow like cargo; the I Spy could lift that dead weight-but "dead" was the word, for that was what they would be.

He needed a transport.

Buying a passenger ship big enough to ferry the Families from Earth up to where the New Frontiers hung in her construction orbit was not difficult; Four Planets Passenger Service would gladly unload such a ship at a fair price. Passenger trade competition being what it was, they were anxious to cut their losses on older ships no longer popular with tourists. But a passenger ship would not do; not only would there be unhealthy curiosity in what he intended to do with such a ship, but-and this settled it-he could not pilot it single-handed. Under the Revised Space Precautionary Act, passenger ships were required to be built for human control throughout on the theory that no automatic safety device could replace human judgment in an emergency.

It would have to be a freighter.

Lazarus knew the best place to find one. Despite efforts to make the Moon colony ecologically self-sufficient, Luna City still imported vastly more tonnage than she exported. On Earth this would have resulted in "empties coming back"; in space transport it was sometimes cheaper to let empties accumulate, especially on Luna where an empty freighter was worth more as metal than it had cost originally as a ship back Earthside.

He left the bus when it landed at Goddard City, went to the space field, paid his bills, and took possession of the I Spy, filed a request for earliest available departure for Luna. The slot he was assigned was two days from then, but Lazarus did not let it worry him; he simply went back to the docking company and indicated that he was willing to pay liberally for a swap, in departure time. In twenty minutes he had oral assurance that he could boost for Luna that evening.

He spent the remaining several hours in the maddening red tape of interplanetary clearance. He first picked up the letter of credit Ford had promised him and converted it into cash. Lazarus would have been quite willing to use a chunk of the cash to speed up his processing just as he had paid (quite legally) for a swap in slot with another ship. But he found himself unable to do so. Two centuries of survival had taught him that a bribe must be offered as gently and as indirectly as a gallant suggestion is made to a proud lady; in a very few minutes he came to the glum conclusion that civic virtue and public honesty could be run into the ground-the functionaries at Goddard Field seemed utterly innocent of the very notion of cumshaw, squeeze, or the lubricating effect of money in routine transactions. He admired their incorruptibility; he did not have to like it-most especially when filling out useless forms cost him the time he had intended to devote to a gourmet's feast in the Skygate Room.

He even let himself be vaccinated again rather than go back to the I Spy and dig out the piece of paper that showed he had been vaccinated on arrival Earthside a few weeks earlier.

Nevertheless, twenty minutes before his revised slot time, he lay at the controls of the I Spy, his pouch bulging with stamped papers and his stomach not bulging with the sandwich he had managed to grab. He had worked out the "Hohmann's-S" trajectory he would use; the results had been fed into the autopilot. All the lights on his board were green save the one which would blink green when field control started his count down. He waited in the warm happiness that always filled him when about to boost.

A thought hit him and he raised up against his straps. Then he loosened the chest strap and sat up, reached for his copy of the current Terra Pilot and Traffic Hazards Supplement. Mmm...

New Frontiers hung in a circular orbit of exactly twenty-four hours, keeping always over meridian 106 degrees west at declination zero at a distance from Earth center of approximately twenty-six thousand miles.

Why not pay her a call, scout out the lay of the land?

The I Spy, with tanks topped off and cargo spaces empty, had many mile-seconds of reserve boost. To be sure, the field had cleared him for Luna City, not for the interstellar ship... but, with the Moon in its present phase, the deviation from his approved flight pattern would hardly show on a screen, probably would not be noticed until the film record was analyzed at some later time-at which time Lazarus would receive a traffic citation, perhaps even have his license suspended. But traffic tickets had never worried him... and it was certainly worthwhile to reconnoitre.

He was already setting up the problem in his ballistic calculator. Aside from checking the orbit elements of the New Frontiers in the Terra Pilot Lazarus could have done it in his sleep; satellite-matching maneuvers were old hat for any pilot and a doubly-tangent trajectory for a twenty-four hour orbit was one any student pilot knew by heart.

He fed the answers into his autopilot during the count down, finished with three minutes to spare, strapped himself down again and relaxed as the acceleration hit him. When the ship went into free fall, he checked his position and vector via the field's transponder. Satisfied, he locked his board, set the alarm for rendezvous, and went to sleep.