A nervous stir runs through the room. The briefing officer meets pairs of eyes one by one. The romantics are finding their legend toothed and clawed. The disquiet grows. Executions. You don't execute people any more....

Soon we're herded aboard a shuttle—first landsmen for the fleets in generations—that is obviously no commercial lighter, just stark functionalism and steel painted gray. We're lifting blind, I see. Weedlike clumps of wiring hang where viewscreens have been removed—no chances are they taking.

The knot behind my ear, the nondispersable parts of the tracer, seizes me with iron, spiked fingers. I've been "switched on" by the Bureau. I stagger. The thin, pale Starfisher girl seating us asks, "Are you ill?" On her face, shocking me more than talk of execution, is a look of true concern, not bland, commercially dispensed stewardess's care.

I want fires across my mind, as it so often does. "Yes." Dropping into my seat, "A touch of migraine." But I can never discover what I need.

Her eyes widen a fraction. She'll report this. But, somewhere hi my medical file, a tendency toward migraine is noted to cover the pain of the tracer. I am susceptible, though it hasn't bothered me in years. There are pills. Why, I ask myself again, do they have to use an imperfect device? Of course, it's all we've got, the only way to track them to the herd. Completely nonmetal, the tracer is the only undetectable device available.

I want is in my mind. The Bureau has supported my years of search, knowing I'm searching (Psych doesn't miss much), knows it's showing a good return on investment (the sane make poor agents, axmen, or whatever). Years, and I still have no intimation of the absence in my soul.