So Kaylor had attached the craft to the hull of his own ship and carried it back to Silea with them. There, with the help of some of Kaylor’s more unsavory associates, the ship had been repainted and re-designated. Still, the unique design of the ship could not be hidden from inquiring eyes.

He entered the ship and stowed his professional gear in the ship’s single stateroom, then proceeded to the pilothouse. The ship was small, yet powerful. It boasted dual 5,000-Unnis 2g/Generators that provided equal compression whether in a front- or backwell. Yet being as small as she was, the ship only had one internal gravity generator. This didn’t cause a problem for Adam; he always kept the internal gravity cranked up to what he estimated to be at least Earth’s level, if not a little higher, in order to keep himself strong and his muscles toned. Yet it did present the rare visitor to his ship with difficulty moving about. That was all right; he never had that many visitors anyway.

Adam slipped into the pilot seat and began the lift-off procedures. Kaylor — probably his only real friend outside of Earth — had once told him that while on-planet he always kept one of his generators active, just in case he had to make a quick exit. Adam had adopted this practice, and it had saved his hide on more than one occasion. So it wasn’t long before the Cassie-1 was lifting silently and smoothly off the surface of Hildoria, and heading for open space.

As he reached the outer limits of the planet’s thin atmosphere, Adam spotted two contacts on his screen moving to intercept. This had been expected. He made no attempt to evade; rather he watched to verify their intent before taking action.

Since the Cassie-1 had been originally built and owned by the Juireans, Adam had elected to save one special feature of that lineage — the ship’s original transponder. On Silea, Adam had a new primary transponder installed that masked the ship’s Juirean identity, otherwise everywhere he went local officials and luminaries would be swarming all over him and the ship, trying to make an impression and curious as to why a Juirean official would be arriving unannounced. The new transponder, although highly illegal, had solved that problem.