"But you would not wish to jump blind. Louis Wu, is it not enough that I, a puppeteer, will be with you? What could you possibly fear that I would not fear first? The intelligent caution of my race is proverbial."

"So it is," said Louis. In point of fact, he was hooked. Xenophilia and restlessness and curiosity combined: wherever the puppeteer was going, Louis Wu was going too. But he wanted to hear more.

And his bargaining position was excellent. An alien would not live in such a room by choice. This ordinarylooking hotel room, this reassuringly normal room from the viewpoint of a man of Earth, must have been furnished especially for recruiting.

"You won't tell me what it is you intend to explore," said Louis. "Will you tell me where it is?"

"It is two hundred light years from here in the direction of the Lesser Cloud."

"But it would take us nearly two years to get there at hyperdrive speeds."

"No. We have a ship which will travel considerably faster than a conventional hyperdrive craft. It will cover a light year in five-fourths of a minute."

Louis opened his mouth, but nothing came out. One and a quarter minutes?

"This should not surprise you, Louis Wu. How else could we have sent an agent to the galactic core, to learn of the chain reaction of novae? You should have deduced the existence of such a ship. If my mission is successful, I plan to turn the ship over to my crew, with blueprints with which to build more.

"This ship, then, is your … fee, salary, what have you. You may observe its flight characteristics when we join the puppeteer migration. There you will learn what it is that we propose to explore."

Join the puppeteer ndgration … "Count me in," said Louis Wu. The chance to see an entire sentient species on the move! Huge ships carrying thousands or millions of puppeteers each, whole working ecologies …