His card was evidently all that he needed for entry.

At the sixth gate he dismissed his car and let it shoot back into the traffic mess. He went up to one of the guard-guides and presented the card.

The guide inspected it. “Section G of the Bureau of Investigation,” he muttered. “Every day, something new. I never heard of it.”

“It’s probably some outfit in charge of cleaning the heads on space liners,” Ronny said unhappily. He’d never heard of it either.

“Well, it’s no problem,” the guard-guide said. He summoned a three-wheel scooter, fed the coördinates into it from Ronny’s card, handed the card back and flipped an easy salute. “You’ll soon know.”

The scooter slid into the Octagon’s hall traffic and proceeded up one corridor, down another, twice taking to ascending ramps. Ronny had read somewhere the total miles of corridors in the Octagon. He hadn’t believed the figures at the time, but now he did. He must have traversed several miles before they got to the Department of Justice alone. It was another quarter mile to the Bureau of Investigation.

The scooter eventually came to a halt, waited long enough for Ronny to dismount and then hurried back into the traffic.

He entered the office. A neatly uniformed reception girl with a harassed and cynical eye looked up from her desk. “Ronald Bronston?” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Where’ve you been?” She had a snappy cuteness. “The commissioner has been waiting for you. Go through that door and to your left.”

Ronny went through that door and to the left. There was another door, inconspicuously lettered ROSS METAXA, COMMISSIONER, SECTION G. Ronny knocked and the door opened.

Ross Metaxa was a man in the middle years, with a sour expression and moist eyes, as though he either drank too much or slept too little. He had been going through a wad of papers, but he looked up as Ronny entered.