Major Harris was unmarried. His parents had been killed in a highway jet-crash in ’44. He had no known living relatives with a greater consanguineity than D+. Height five feet ten, weight 220, color fair, retinal index point 033.

Major Harris was visiting Earth on vacation. He was to spend eight months relaxing on his native world before reassignment to his next planetary post.

Eight months, thought the alien being who called himself Major Abner Harris, would certainly be ample time for Major Abner Harris to lose himself in the swarming billions of Earth and carry out the purposes for which he had been sent.

The Lucky Lady was on the last lap of her journey across half a million light-years, bearing passengers to Earth and points along the route. Harris had boarded the starship on Alpheratz IV, after having been shipped there from Darruu via private warpship. For the past three weeks, while the giant vessel had slipped gently through the sleek gray tunnel in the continuum that was its overdrive channel, Major Harris had been practicing how to walk at Earth-norm gravity.

Darruu was a large world—its radius was 11,000 miles—and though its density was not as great as Earth’s, still the gravitational attraction was half again as intense. Harris had been born and raised under Darruu’s gravity of 1.5 Earth-norm. Or, as Harris had thought of it in the days when his mind centered not on Earth but on Darruu, Earth’s gravity was .67 Darruu-norm.

Either way, it meant that his muscles would be functioning in a gravitational field two-thirds as strong as the one they had developed in. For a while, at least, he would have a tendency to lift his feet too high, to overstep, to exaggerate every motion. If anyone noticed, he could use the excuse that he had spent most of his time in service on heavy planets, and that would explain away some of his awkwardness.