But let anyone encroach on his patrol sector, by as much as a milliparsec, and right away he’d report it, even if it meant ratting on a fellow rocket jockey from the Base. Not to mention a few other annoying habits, almost too petty to be mentioned, such as drying himself with other people’s towels, just to keep his own clean longer. The moment he failed to report back from patrol duty, however, Wilmer suddenly turned out to be a prince of a guy, a regular bosom buddy. Again the radar went berserk, the pilots were put on a round-the-clock shift, the flight controllers worked overtime, people took turns catnapping on a bench by the wall and had dinner brought upstairs; the CO, who was on vacation, flew back by special plane and ordered a four-day search mission, the Base morale having sunk so low by now that in retaliation for a single, lousy, imperfectly fitted rivet the men were ready to crack the skull of the mechanic responsible. Two commissions of experts came, an AMU-16—a twin copy of the ship flown by Wilmer—was dismantled screw by screw, clock-fashion, but the results were nil: not a single defective part was found.

Although the sector measured 1,600 billion cubic kilometers, it was also thought to be a relatively tame one, undisturbed by any meteorite showers or the cold remnants of old comet tails, last seen hundreds of years ago—all the more remarkable, considering that comets of that vintage have been known to disintegrate in the vicinity of Jupiter, in its “perturbation mill,” and later to discard pieces of their nucleus onto their former course. But the sector was as good as empty, unmarred by any satellites or asteroids, and least of all by the Belt. And just because it was so “clean,” no one had a hankering to patrol it.

Even so, Wilmer’s made the second disappearance in a row. His tape, which was played and replayed countless times, photocopied, blown up, and forwarded to the Institute, yielded as much information as Thomas’s: zilch. Sporadic signals for a while, then nothing. The signals sent by the transmitter had come at infrequent intervals, on the average of one per hour. Thomas had transmitted a total of eleven signals; Wilmer, fourteen. That was all.