"She understands?" Ulysses asked.

Enoch shook his head. "You sat down by the cup and the cup was empty."

She poured the coffee, then went over to the sofa. "She will not stay with us?" Ulysses asked. "She's intrigued by that table full of trinkets. She set one of them to going."

"You plan to keep her here?"

"I can't keep her," Enoch said. "There'll be a hunt for her. I'll have to take her home."

"I do not like it," Ulysses said.

"Nor do I. Let's admit at once that I should not have brought her here.

But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. I had no time to think it out."

"You've done no wrong," said Ulysses softly.

"She cannot harm us," said Enoch. "Without communication…"

"It's not that," Ulysses told him. "She's just a complication and I do not like further complications. I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we are in trouble."

"Trouble? But there's not been any trouble."

Ulysses lifted his coffee cup and took a long drink of it.

"That is good," he said. "I carry back the bean and make it at my home. But it does not taste the same."

"This trouble?"

"You remember the Vegan that died here several of your years ago."

Enoch nodded. "The Hazer."

"The being has a proper name…"

Enoch laughed. "You don't like our nicknames."

"It is not our way," Ulysses said.

"My name for them," said Enoch, "is a mark of my affection."

"You buried this Vegan."

"In my family plot," said Enoch. "As if he were my own. I read a verse above him."

"That is well and good," Ulysses said. "That is as it should be. You did very well. But the body's gone."

"Gone! It can't be gone!" cried Enoch.

"It has been taken from the grave."

"But you can't know," protested Enoch. "How could you know?"

"Not I. It's the Vegans. The Vegans are the ones who know."

"But they're light-years distant…"

And then he was not too sure. For on that night the wise old one had died and he'd messaged Galactic Central, he had been told that the Vegans had known the moment he had died. And there had been no need for a death certificate, for they knew of what he died.

It seemed impossible, of course, but there were too many impossibilities in the galaxy which turned out, after all, to be entirely possible for a man to ever know when he stood on solid ground.

Was it possible, he wondered, that each Vegan had some sort of mental contact with every other Vegan? Or that some central census bureau (to give a human designation to something that was scarcely understandable) might have some sort of official linkage with every living Vegan, knowing where it was and how it was and what it might be doing?

Something of the sort, Enoch admitted, might indeed be possible. It was not beyond the astounding capabilities that one found on every hand throughout the galaxy. But to maintain a similar contact with the Vegan dead was something else again.

"The body's gone," Ulysses said. "I can tell you that and know it is the truth. You're held accountable."

"By the Vegans?"

"By the Vegans, yes. And the galaxy."

"I did what I could," said Enoch hotly. "I did what was required. I filled the letter of the Vegan law. I paid the dead my honor and the honor of my planet. It is not right that the responsibility should go on forever. Not that I can believe the body can be really gone. There is no one who would take it. No one who knew of it."

"By human logic," Ulysses told him, "you, of course, are right. But not by Vegan logic. And in this case Galactic Central would tend to support the Vegans."

"The Vegans," Enoch said testily, "happen to be friends of mine. I have never met a one of them that I didn't like or couldn't get along with. I can work it out with them."

"If only the Vegans were concerned," said Ulysses, "I am quite sure you could. I would have no worry. But the situation gets complicated as you go along. On the surface it seems a rather simple happening, but there are many factors. The Vegans, for example, have known for some time that the body had been taken and they were disturbed, of course. But out of certain considerations, they had kept their silence."

"They needn't have. They could have come to me. I don't know what could have been done…"

"Silent not because of you. Because of something else."

Ulysses finished off his coffee and poured himself another cup. He filled Enoch's half-filled cup and set the pot aside.

Enoch waited.

"You may not have been aware of it," said Ulysses, "but at the time this station was established, there was considerable opposition to it from a number of races in the galaxy. There were many reasons cited, as is the case in all such situations, but the underlying reason, when you get down to basics, rests squarely on the continual contest for racial or regional advantage. A situation akin, I would imagine, to the continual bickering and maneuvering which you find here upon the Earth to gain an economic advantage for one group or another, or one nation and another. In the galaxy, of course, the economic considerations only occasionally are the underlying factors. There are many other factors than the economic."

Enoch nodded. "I had gained a hint of this. Nothing recently. But I hadn't paid too much attention to it."

"It's largely a matter of direction," Ulysses said. "When Galactic Central began its expansion into this spiral arm, it meant there was no time or effort available for expansions in other directions. There is one large group of races which has held a dream for many centuries of expanding into some of the nearby globular clusters. It does make a dim sort of sense, of course. With the techniques that we have, the longer jump across space to some of the closer clusters is entirely possible. Another thing-the clusters seem to be extraordinarily free of dust and gas, so that once we got there we could expand more rapidly throughout the cluster than we can in many parts of the galaxy. But at best, it's a speculative business, for we don't know what we'll find there. After we've made all the effort and spent all the time we may find little or nothing, except possibly some more real estate. And we have plenty of that in the galaxy. But the clusters have a vast appeal for certain types of minds."

Enoch nodded. "I can see that. It would be the first venturing out of the galaxy itself. It might be the first short step on the route that could lead us to other galaxies."

Ulysses peered at him. "You, too," he said. "I might have known."

Enoch said smugly: "I am that type of mind."

"Well, anyhow, there was this globular-cluster faction-I suppose you'd call it that-which contended bitterly when we began our move in this direction. You understand-certainly you do-that we've barely begun the expansion into this neighborhood. We have less than a dozen stations and we'll need a hundred. It will take centuries before the network is complete."

"So this faction is still contending," Enoch said. "There still is time to stop this spiral-arm project."

"That is right. And that's what worries me. For the faction is set to use this incident of the missing body as an emotion-charged argument against the extension of this network. It is being joined by other groups that are concerned with certain special interests. And these special interest groups see a better chance of getting what they want if they can wreck this project."

"Wreck it?"

"Yes, wreck it. They will start screaming, as soon as the body incident becomes open knowledge, that a planet so barbaric as the Earth is no fit location for a station. They will insist that this station be abandoned."

"But they can't do that!"

"They can," Ulysses said. "They will say it is degrading and unsafe to maintain a station so barbaric that even graves are rifled, on a planet where the honored dead cannot rest in peace. It is the kind of highly emotional argument that will gain wide acceptance and support in some sections of the galaxy. The Vegans tried their best. They tried to hush it up, for the sake of the project. They have never done a thing like that before. They are a proud people and they feel a slight to honor-perhaps more deeply than many other races- and yet, for the greater good, they were willing to accept dishonor. And would have if they could have kept it quiet. But the story leaked out somehow-by good espionage, no doubt. And they cannot stand the loss of face in advertised dishonor. The Vegan who will be arriving here this evening is an official representative charged with delivering an official protest."