He had never been employed by Transplanet, though. He didn't know Nadia Petrovna from Eve!
Then why had she lied?
The robot cab drew up to the curb, stopped, said in a harsh metallic voice, "Offices of the Interplanetary Commission," and the door opened automatically.
II
The light, filtering through Venus' eternal cloud blanket, was a soft gray, not intense enough to cast shadows. Gavin Murdock noted the phenomena with a frown as he walked along the Street of Sorrow.
In the center of the block, he paused suddenly, lit a cigarette. His eyes, darting across the lighter's flame, searched the crooked twilit street behind him. He was just in time to see a figure flatten itself in a doorway.
Gavin's lips tightened. Ever since leaving the Commissioner's he had been conscious of being followed. There had been a man on the corner below his window when he packed his luggage and sent it off to the Nova. The same man had been loitering near the corner as he set off for the Temple of Joy to meet the officers.
He certainly didn't intend to tip his hand by communicating with the T.I.S. Commandant Samuels would know that he had accomplished the first step of that intricate plan, hatched in the head offices of the Terrestial Intelligence Service, when they saw his name on the Nova's articles.
He allowed his glance to travel about the street. He was in the Old Port district. Once it had been the heart of the city, but, the big space lines having built a new field on the bogs of Antram just north of Venusport, the crumbling rocket blast pits of Old Port were no longer used except by slavers, smugglers and a few tramp freighters.