a very daring assignment as it means contact with women, who Athosians are taught are demonic and terrifying. Ethan arrives at the interstellar hub of Kline Station and immediately encounters his first woman, Commander Elli Quinn, a rather unorthodox intelligence officer with the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet (and a subordinate of Admiral Naismith's). Though she is pleasant and even helpful, Ethan is wary of her. He is soon abducted and interrogated by military agents from Cetaganda who are seeking a fugitive named Terrence Cee as well as their own lost tissue cultures. They refuse to believe that Ethan is not an opposing intelligence operative. Elli rescues Ethan from certain execution. They become reluctant allies as Elli explains that she has actually been hired by House Bharaputra to track the Cetagandans, and for her own reasons determine what their interest is in the tissue cultures and how it relates to a secret Cetagandan research project. Terrence approaches Ethan with a request for asylum, revealing himself to be the last survivor of a Cetagandan genetic project to create telepaths. Although his telepathy is reliable, it has a small range and can only be triggered for a short amount of time by ingesting large doses of the amino acid tyramine. Terrance’s female counterpart, Janine, had been killed in their escape, but he managed to preserve her body and transport it to Jackson's Whole, where he paid House Bharaputra to splice her genes into the ovarian cultures that were intended for Athos. Terrence had planned to also emigrate to Athos with the cultures, but had been delayed on his way to Kline Station, and is now horrified to learn that the cultures were stolen and replaced by the useless material that ultimately arrived on Athos. The Cetagandans had tracked Terrence to Jackson's Whole; arriving after his departure, they had killed the Bharaputra researchers who had worked with him and destroyed their records. They then traced the tissue shipment to Kline Station, knowing Terrence would eventually come for it, though they have no knowledge of what happened to the original cultures and are desperate to reclaim them. Elli and Ethan manage to have the Cetagandans seized by Kline Station security, just as they discover that a minor official at the station had, for petty personal reasons, "thrown out" the Bharaputran tissue cultures that contained Janine's genes and replaced them with the useless biological material. Elli