"I'll need a name for myself. In a way I died and was born again, as happens to all good Kedaki. So, how about Matlin?"
"Matlin? That means The Reborn, doesn't it?"
"The Reborn," Rhodes said, nodding. "Well, doc, The Reborn is going to get dressed and out of here. And thanks for everything."
"Will I be able to contact you anywhere, if I learn something?"
"I'll contact you, after I get settled."
An hour later, Rhodes signed the Arcturan hospital release form. He signed the form with his new name, Matlin.
The Dean of the Department of Archaeology of the Junction City branch of Kedaki College entered the hospital twenty minutes after Matlin had walked out into the dazzling Denebian sunshine. The Dean, whose name was Gawroi, hardly seemed the academic type. For Gawroi was a strapping baseborn Kedaki who had done the near impossible: Gawroi had risen in life to a position of some importance among his people. He was a big fellow with enormous shoulders and an appetite for life second only to his appetite for eating. But Gawroi, for all his hedonism, was not soft. He was a hard, capable man—who passionately believed in the Kedaki doctrine of reincarnation.
That Five Bureau Director, he thought with admiration. Smart. He was smart, all right. He's finally got a lead on this Earthman, Rhodes. But he doesn't send a Five Bureau Operative. Why should he? An extra-Kedakian like the plastic surgeon Quotis of Arcturus would be suspicious of a Five Bureau Operative, wouldn't he? The Kedaki Secret Police—of course he would be suspicious. But of a fellow scientist, an archaeologist? Never!
Gawroi grinned in admiration, then waited until the grin vanished, waited until his big, earnest face assumed its most earnest look, and entered Quotis' office. Quotis, he observed, was a small bespectacled Arcturan with vivid orange skin. Quotis rushed around his desk, beaming, to pump Gawroi's right hand in the Earth gesture which had swept the galaxy.