They had removed the fleshy four-inch-long tendrils that sprouted at every Darruui’s temples; they had covered his deep golden-hued skin with an overlay of convincingly Terran white, and grafted it so skillfully that by now it had become his real skin.

Contact lenses had turned his eyes from their normal red to a Terran blue-gray. Hormone treatments had caused hair to sprout on head and body, thick Earthman hair where none had been before. The surgeons had not meddled with his internal plumbing, because that was too great a task even for their skill. Inwardly he remained alien, with the efficient Darruui digestive organ where a Terran had so many incredible feet of intestine, and with the double heart and the sturdy liver just back of his three lungs.

Inside he was alien. Behind the walls of his skull, he was Aar Khülom of the city of Helasz—a Darruui of the highest class, a Servant of the Spirit. But he had to forget his Darruui identity now, he had to cloak himself in the Earthman identity he wore. He was not Aar Khülom, he told himself doggedly, but Major Abner Harris.

He knew Major Harris’ biography in the greatest detail, and reviewed it constantly, so that it lay beneath the conscious part of his mind like the hidden nine-tenths of an iceberg, ready to come automatically to use when needed in an emergency.

Major Abner Harris, according to the identity they had created for him, had been born in 2520, in Cincinatti, Ohio. (Cincinatti’s a city, he thought. Ohio is a state. Remember that and don’t mix them up!) Ohio was one of the United States of America, which was a large political sub-unit of the planet Earth.

Major Abner Harris was now aged 42—with a good hundred years of his lifespan left. He had attended Western Reserve University, studying galactography; graduated ’43. Entered the Interstellar Redevelopment Corps ’46, commissioned ’50, now holding the rank of Major. Successful diplomatic-military missions to Altair VII, Sirius IX, Procyon II, Alpheratz IV, and Sirius VII.