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were ignored unless their activities posed a threat to Synthesis members or seemed likely to.
    As Director of the Department of Uncertified Worlds, Rok Wllon placed observation teams on such planets wherever or whenever he thought they were needed. These teams supplied voluminous and continuing reports on the worlds, and if through some evolutionary coincidence a world achieved eligibility by way of its own self-improvement, the department recommended it for membership. Rok Wllon performed a highly responsible and thankless job, and he did it superbly. For all of his petty idiosyncrasies, he was the government’s best top level administrator.
    Rok Wllon’s young administrative assistant, a compatriot of his named Kom Rmmon, politely expressed his regrets to Darzek. The director had left that morning with a team of administrators for the world of Slonfus to attend a conference about something or other.
    That seemed perfectly normal. The Director of Uncertified Worlds spent more than half of his time traveling.
    But he did not normally leave for that kind of conference unexpectedly—especially when he had an appointment with the First Councilor. Darzek’s uneasiness remained, but for the present there was nothing that he could do. He asked to be notified the moment the director returned; but Rok Wllon’s trip proved to be an extended one, and Darzek had his own work to do, and eventually his puzzlement over the Eighth Councilor’s conduct—and Kamm, the Silent Planet—faded.
    * * * *
    Periodically Supreme divested its computer self of a list of worlds under the heading, “Potential Trouble Sources.” The projected difficulties were sometimes monumental and sometimes unbelievably trivial, and the word potential not infrequently meant, as Darzek had discovered in the past, that even a computer’s imagination could be overly active.
    But Darzek felt obliged to investigate each world named. In most instances the action needed was obvious and easily taken: to avert a medical crisis due to inept public health measures; to prevent a looming economic catastrophe caused by a failing source of critical metals; to defuse an interworld dispute with timely mediation. Darzek’s practice was to first skim through the columns, picking out those worlds he was familiar with.
    On this particular list, his rapid skimming was brought to an abrupt halt by one word: Kamm.

CHAPTER 3
    Darzek immediately asked Supreme for a posting on its councilors. Supreme did not know where Rok Wllon was.
    Neither did the Department of Uncertified Worlds. The director was traveling, Kom Rmmon informed Darzek politely. Doubtless he would soon supply the department with a new itinerary.
    Kom Rmmon had been trained superbly. He radiated efficiency and intelligence; but beneath the imposing veneer of those qualities, it seemed to Darzek that the youngster was as badly frightened as Rok Wllon had been.
    As First Councilor, Darzek possessed an impressive portfolio of emergency powers. Although he disciplined himself to use them only in genuine crises, and as a last resort, he had little difficulty in persuading himself that the disappearance of a member of the Council of Supreme had to be investigated at once, with every means available to him.
    Darzek went directly to the Eighth Councilor’s official residence and had himself admitted by Supreme. He sat down at the communications panel in Rok Wllon’s study and asked Supreme to show him, one at a time, the last things the Eighth Councilor had viewed before his departure.
    A projection filled the room just above Darzek’s head—an enlarged portion of the same shallow slice of the galaxy that Rok Wllon had displayed to him. Darzek picked out the sun Gwanor and its one habitable planet, Kamm; but the pinpoints of light told him nothing.
    The star projection faded, and the desk screen came to life. The beautifully drawn calligraphy shown there was Rok Wllon’s own angular script. Darzek moved over to the desk