A Novel by GEORGE O. SMITH (continued 3)

Farradyne saw he had plenty of time. He waited until the punchings on the tape cut the drive a bit, then went below and came back into the control room with Brenner's space suit. He got out patching material and carefully repaired the triangular rip. Then he set about checking it, testing the air supply and purifier, filling the food pouch and the water tank. Men had been known to last seventy-two hours in a suit like this without any discomfort other than the confinement; the primary danger was running out of oxygen and the secondary danger was water starvation.

When the suit was checked to Farradyne's satisfaction he took time out for a last cigarette. He lit one and puffed before he spoke. "Honey-child, I could outguess that gang of yours until Sol freezes over. But sooner or later they'll get tired of the chase and end it by launching a target-seeking missile, and that will be that. I have no intention of sitting here and waiting for it."

"So what are you going to do?"

Farradyne reached up and stopped the clock. "I've punched a very interesting autopilot tape. It'll dodge and swoop along at about four gravities in the cockeyedest course, and lead your pals a long and devious way from where you and I part company. Four gee is heavy enough to keep you flat, so you can't louse it up. You can't measure time too accurately, so when they grab you you won't be able to tell 'em just when I took off. They'll have a fine old time combing space for a man-sized mote, making his course to Terra."

"Charles—?"

Farradyne snubbed his cigarette out and dropped on his knees so that he could look down into her face. "You've pitched me many a low, soft curve to the inside," he told her quietly. "This is one battle you lose, I think. So we'll meet again to take it up later."

He bent down with a cynical smile and kissed her on the lips. To his surprise he found them responsive.

"So long, Carolyn," he chuckled. "Some of this has been a lot of fun!"

He donned the space suit and with a careless wave of his hand went down the stairs. She was not looking at him, but at the ruined microphone and the radio equipment far out of her reach. Panic showed in her face and gave her some strength, but not enough to fight the four gravities that held her flat.

Then as Farradyne lost sight of her, his jaunty self-confidence faded. He was far from the bright character he had portrayed. Up until not-too-long-ago, Farradyne had been complimenting himself on being able to find out more about the hellflower operations than the Sandmen, and it had not occurred to him that there was a reason for it. Now he knew. It became obvious that fighting a gang of cutthroats, and fighting an enemy race of intelligent people, were two different things. About as different as Farradyne was from the brilliant operator he had begun to think he was.

It required that he change his plans for escape. He knew that he could flee the big ship and have a good chance of being picked up by a Space Guard scooter as soon as he could get within calling-distance of Luna. But the chances were just as high that the hellflower people would have their entire undercover outfit alerted, and at the first radio call would be swarming the neighborhood to pick him up.

He paused by the spacelock and cracked the big portal, thoughtfully eyeing the huge starship, a tiny dot far below, visible only because of its reaction-flare. Then he closed the lock and went down and down in the Lancaster until he found the lowermost inspection cubby. He crawled in, closed the inspection hatch behind him, and settled down to wait.

Time creaked past, and the Lancaster turned and curved according to the punchings on the autopilot tape. Farradyne had only one prayer, now: that the enemy ship would not get tired of the chase and fire a target-seeking missile, ending the whole game with a wave of intolerable heat and indescribably bright light. Carolyn's presence aboard the Lancaster might prevent that until the last moment.

The hour-period ended with the Lancaster pointing up on a quartering course from Terra and Sol—a long way from the point of his supposed escape. Not long after that, Farradyne heard the clink of magnetic grapples.

He tensed again. Would they fine-comb the Lancaster? Or would the question-and-answer session with Carolyn convince them that he had abandoned ship? If so, would they take her off and blast the Lanc' or would they deem it of value and keep it?

His mind went on with unanswerable questions: how good was their radar? How alert was their radar operator? Were both good enough to state unequivocably that there had been no object leaving the Lancaster on a tangential course? Or would there have been the usual clutter of noise and interference, so that no one would doubt that he had left the ship? And, assuming that the enemy considered a spacecraft valuable, where would they take it and what would they do with it?

Far from feeling gratified at his maneuver, Farradyne felt only satisfied to be alive and temporarily out of the hands of the enemy. What happened from here on in must be played by ear against an unknown score for three voices.

The drive of the Lancaster dropped from four gravities to about one, and Farradyne could hear dimly the clumpings of heavy feet. Then the drive diminished again, remaining at about a quarter-gravity or maybe less, and there were sounds of feet above his head. He tasted the acid in his mouth; he found his heavy automatic and clutched it clumsily in the heavy space-glove and prepared to give back whatever they gave him. Capture might be preferable to death—but Farradyne had every right to believe that the enemy could not permit him to stay alive with what he knew about them, even though it was precious little.

The cubby he was hiding in was annularly shaped; to one side was space beyond the hull-plates. Inside was the water-jacket that cooled the throat of the reaction motor. Farradyne moved quietly around the central pillar until he was on the opposite side from the inspection hatch and settled down to wait.

On the plates above his head was the scraping of something heavy being hauled across the deck.

He heard the sound of triple-toned voices in both musical and discordant sounds, distorted and muffled by the deck and by the helmet he wore. Someone fiddled with the inspection hatch; and Farradyne found the scuttlebutt and valved air out into space so the enemy would have a hard time cracking the hatch. Whoever it was gave up after a moment; and then came the sound of drilling on the deck-plates above him. A cloud of whitish vapor spurted downward and the sound of alien voices rose sharply as the drill came through. Three more spurts of escaping air blasted downward in whitish vapor that skirled around the annular room and went in a fading draw towards the scuttlebutt.

Plugs filled the four holes and Farradyne turned his head-torch on them. They were heavy self-tapping bolts being turned in from above. There was a softer sound of scraping, and the clumping of feet; then the sound of men at work faded away.

Farradyne took a deep breath and realized that his skin was itching from the cold perspiration that bathed him. The taste in his mouth was brackish; his heart was pounding and his breath was shallow and rapid. He opened his mouth to gasp and discovered that he had been clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw ached.

He closed the scuttlebutt, but did not valve any air into his hiding place. He put the top of his helmet against the deck-plates above him and listened. Far above he could hear them, still at work; but they were going higher and higher in the ship.

He relaxed, waiting.

Three more hours passed, as nerve-wracking as any Farradyne had ever spent. Then, with absolutely no warning, the drive went off completely. He floated from the deck and scrabbled around to grab a stanchion, finally getting his magnetic shoes against a girder where they held him at an odd angle.

The drive went on to a full one-gravity and hurled Farradyne flat against the bottom of the cubby, wrenching his ankles slightly. The drive went off again, and then on, and finally off. This time it stayed off.

Floating free, with only his feet for mooring, was like resting in a tub of body-temperature water; and as the lulling, muscle-freeing sensation went on and on, Farradyne's mind lulled and he dozed. From the doze, he dropped off into a deep slumber.

XXI

Farradyne awoke to the pressure of about one-gravity and began to wonder how far the Lancaster had carried him under its jury-rigged drive. His watch said that fourteen hours had passed since weightlessness had come, but this was no good for an estimate of distance.

The whole thing was incomprehensible to him. Interstellar travel in a matter of hours made his mind reel, and the idea of installing a gadget that made it possible with the ease of installing a radio in an automobile only added to the inconsistencies. All he could grasp of it was that the gadget the alien race had must be some sort of force-field generator that worked independently of the basic reaction motor and therefore could be turned off or on at will. He gave up trying to theorize and began to consider the more personal problem of his location and what he could do.

He cracked the scuttlebutt and found that the ship was a-planet. He listened and heard nothing, not even the familiar sounds of a ship in warm-up. He cracked the hatch of his cubby and looked out. The small corridor was as dark as the grave, and as silent. Boldly he stepped out and looked around under the light of his spacesuit torch.

Bolted to the floor were four rectangular boxes of metal connected together by a heavy cable, and from one a second cable ran to a standard connector set in the wall of the Lancaster.

Like all other Solarian spacecraft, the Lancaster was well-supplied with a network of cables running up and down the length of the ship to serve as test connections and spares for this or that equipment when needed. So the enemy had re-connected their multi-line cable to one of the standard Terran connectors and plugged the cable into the Lancaster's cable-plate.

Farradyne could see nothing about the metal boxes that would tell him anything, so he left them and went aloft, cautiously. He doffed the spacesuit at the next level and hung it neatly in a suit locker, before he continued up the stairways.

Out of one porthole he could see the spaceport. It was broad and dark except for a bouquet of searchlights that drilled into the sky around the rim, a wash of floodlamps that surrounded one of the vast starships a mile or so distant, and the far-off blurs of bright red light that probably read "Spaceman's Bar" in whatever the enemy used for a printed language.

He left the viewport and went higher until he came to the salon. He peered into it from floor level, but it was dark and untenanted. The spacelock was open and Farradyne looked out of the big round opening across the field to another huge starship standing a few hundred yards from the Lancaster. The other ship was as dark as the Lancaster, except for one small porthole that gleamed like a headlight in the darkness.

The problem of where he was sent him to the control room. He looked into the sky, hunting for familiar constellations. The Pleiades were there, but warped, and Farradyne found that while he knew they were distorted as an aggregation of stellar positions, he could not remember their proper relationship. Orion was visible, but the hero had hiked his belt up. The Great Bear was sitting on his haunches, and the Smaller Bear had lost his front feet. Sirius no longer blazed in Canis Major. Procyon had taken off for parts unknown, while several other bright stars dotted the skies in places where no stars had been on Terra.

He tried to recall visits to the big stellatarium in New York where the lecturer displayed the skies as seen from various well-known stars that were within a half-hundred light years of Sol; but he found that he evidently had not been as attentive as he might have been.

Finally he gave up hoping to establish his whereabouts by visual inspection, and took his first look at the control room. He could see nothing changed at first; then he found a small auxiliary panel beside the pilot's seat, which contained a bar-topped toggle switch and three pilot lamps quite different in appearance from the rest of the Lancaster's standard equipment. He felt an urge to try the toggle, but fought it down; it was too much like playing with toy building blocks made of subcritical masses of plutonium, and Farradyne wanted to stay alive long enough to watch the ruin of the enemy, not become a part of it.

He got his 20-power binoculars from the locker and went down to the spacelock. The near-by starship was as abandoned as the Lancaster, except for that one bright porthole. Through it he could see nothing but one corner of wall and ceiling.

A sudden flash of light made Farradyne drop to the floor of the salon and wriggle forward cautiously to the edge of the door.

A vehicle of some sort had turned in at the spaceport from the rim, and its headlights had flashed against his face. He looked at it through the glasses but could not see beyond the glare of the headlights; the car was coming swiftly toward the Lancaster.

Farradyne gathered himself to make a grand rush for his cubby, but stayed to watch because he could make safety after he was certain that the car would stop at the Lancaster. Instead, the vehicle swung around the interstellar ship and stopped by the landing ramp. Three men and a woman got out—

"Norma!" breathed Farradyne.

High in the enemy ship, one porthole winked off and the one beside it winked on, and a few minutes later Farradyne saw the same trio of men escort Clevis from the landing ramp and hand him into the spaceport jeep. The engine roared and they took off for the rim of the port.

Farradyne looked around the spaceport and wondered. It seemed such a cozy place, completely unguarded so far as he could tell. This undoubtedly meant that the port was a restricted zone and anybody permitted inside the boundaries was known and recognized before he got in.

The jeep disappeared, and Farradyne came down his landing ramp and scooted across the flat spaceport to the starship.

Inside the spacelock was a small ante-room with an elevator and some stairs. Farradyne did not trust the elevator; he turned and raced up the stairs, ignoring the warnings of his own mind that this was a completely foolhardy stunt.

Up and up he went, around circular corridors, past dark doorways and sealed hatches, until he was both winded and muscle-weary from climbing. He paused from time to time to orient himself by a quick look out of the nearest porthole that faced the Lancaster, until he found that he was at the right level above the control room of his own ship. The next level above brought him to a door that had a thin line of light along the bottom.

Across the door was a metal bar, but the slide-aside keeper, with a hole in it for a lock, hung open; the enemy had not considered it necessary to lock the door against outside tampering.

Farradyne slipped the keeper aside and lifted the bar.

Norma stood there just inside the door, waiting. Her hands were on her hips and there was a cold glitter in her eye. It flickered and failed as she recognized Farradyne.

"Well!" she snapped. "If it isn't our Boy Scout and Man-about-space who claims he doesn't know where hellflowers come from!"

"I didn't—but I'm learning fast," he told her. "Maybe you can help. Do you know where we are?"

"Your friends asked questions. They didn't tell me anything."

He looked at her sourly. "I wish I'd known the other light in the window was Clevis," he said.

"So you didn't know?" she cried angrily.

Farradyne waved a hand sidewise and it shut her up. "Stop making like a fishwife and think! You have a good mind—for God's sake, use it!"

She looked at him calculatingly. "Just what do you expect me to assume?"

"Let's assume that I'm what I said I was," he said. "And let's assume we're fighting an undeclared war against a powerful enemy. An enemy that is running down the moral fiber of our race so they can walk in and take over without an open battle. Does that make sense?"

Norma considered it a moment. "Of course. Nobody wins a shooting-war. But which side are you on, Farradyne?"

He grunted. "Norma, just who was your brother?"

"Frank was one of Howard's best men," she said simply.

"More of the pattern clearing up," he sighed. "They killed your brother, getting a lot of innocent bystanders in the process. They tried to kill me the same way, although I didn't have anything more than a crude idea to go on."

Norma looked at him soberly. "I hate to admit it, but I've heard this three-tongued language of yours. So that makes you right on one count anyway."

"We're not fighting only a well-integrated mob," he said. "We're fighting a complete stellar culture."

"You say 'we' so blithely. Tell me how you managed to turn up like the proverbial bad penny."

"I outguessed 'em, finally. I was right, for once—" He explained how it had been done in a few rapid sentences.

"We saw them catch the Lancaster, and wondered why you suddenly went dead at the board after dodging them so well. Damn it, Farra—er—Charles, you've done it."

"Done what?"

"Convinced me. You aren't here to play the friend-in-need act to get more information out of me, after loading me to the gills with stuff out of a needle that makes me babble like a marmoset. So you're here for what you say."

"Why did they bring you back here?" he asked. "It seems to me they'd toss you in the locker."

"That's for later. Right now they're comparing my story with Howard's, and after that we'll both be taken to their 'Detention Planet' in some other stellar system and kept as last-ditch hostages in this war. There seem to be a lot of people who got too bright for the enemy and they're all there, too."

Farradyne swore. "The stinking bastards—!"

Norma shook her head coolly. "That's emotion, Charles. I don't know exactly what their purpose is, but I do understand that this is a conflict for eventual survival, and for the rule of an economic empire."

"But—"

Norma shook her head slowly. "Put the shoe on the other foot, Charles. Suppose you and your kind had come upon these people—how would you see them?"

"As possible allies and friends, and—"

"Balderdash. You'd have seen them as possible customers, and people to be exploited, and maybe enemies after you knew their history. Their attitude is as arrogant as ours, and their personal justification is as high. By some lucky break they got to interstellar travel before we did and so they automatically place us in an inferior position; but they know that this doesn't make us a push-over. We are scientifically capable of discovering their interstellar drive at any moment, and why we haven't is probably just a matter of our not combining the right sciences. Our knowledge of medicine is far wider than theirs, for instance."

"How can you know this?" he asked.

Norma slipped open a few buttons at her throat and slipped her dress down from one shoulder. There was a tiny circular white bandage stuck to one spot. "They took a sample of me," she said, "because I seem to be immune to several diseases that should give me trouble. When I asked about this, they told me that they hoped to discover just what cell-change takes place when we take our anti-cancer immunization. That thing they have yet to discover."

"But—"

"Oh, they use our immunization," she said, slipping the dress up. "But they use it as an African witch doctor might use a typhoid serum. The thing you have to remember, Charles, is that if Terrans had gotten there first there would have been the same conflict, but started by the other side."

Farradyne shook his head angrily. "We're not inclined to ruin—"

"Stop sounding like one of King Arthur's knights. Men of sense and good judgment don't request their enemies to meet them on a field of honor. Instead, a state of war is assumed and from that instant on 'A' is looking for a chance to stab 'B' in the back because he knows that 'B' will cut him off at the hips if he turns his back for a moment. So both sides know that open warfare means total destruction and the process is one of boring from within, or gnawing at the foundation. But this is no place to get involved in a discussion of ethics, Charles. Where do we go from here?"

"If I knew how to run that ka-dodie in the Lancaster we'd head for Sol—if I knew where Sol was."

"And how about Howard?"

"I don't know about Clevis," he told her. "The thing to do would be to hike it home as fast as we could and spill our tale to the people who'd know what to do. Let's face it, Norma. They can mingle with Terrans because they can speak our language. But I couldn't mingle with them to locate Howard. I'd be picked up in a minute."

"So how do we get back?"

"Why do you think they brought the Lancaster?"

"Probably to fit her out as a bona-fide hellflower runner."

"Okay, then, we'll hide out in my cubby until they run her back."

"You hide out," said Norma. "If they find me missing from here they'll know that something smells."

Farradyne chuckled. "They're as arrogant as the Gods of Olympus. Part of their gang is still expecting me to turn up near Terra on an escape course, and the only smart thing I've done in this game is to be where they didn't dream I'd be. So we'll be where they don't expect us, and maybe we'll get away with it. Come on, let's hide out."

XXII

Halfway down the stairs in the Lancaster, Farradyne put out a hand and whispered, "Trouble."

"I don't hear anything."

"Someone's tinkering with something down below. See the dim light?"

"Oh," she nodded. Farradyne waved her back, and stole down the stairs and peeked cautiously around the corner. A man sat on the floor with his back to Farradyne, probing into one of the mysterious boxes with a long-handled tool.

He went back to Norma. "They're tuning up the drive."

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"Hide somewhere until that guy is finished."

"We can wait it out," said Norma thoughtfully. "Then if trouble comes at the last moment, I can slide out of here like a startled rabbit and draw the chase away from you."

"But I'm—"

"Stop being noble. You're not known to be here—you might get away with it. Besides—"

The sound of an engine cut them off. From not too far away came the rapid sing-song of triple voices, and, following the chant, the irritated voice of Carolyn Niles: "Stop that, you imbeciles. Speak Terran!"

"Why?" came the insolent reply.

"Because I don't want to get into the habit of speaking out of turn. I did it once and you know what happened."

"I merely asked when we were taking off."

"As soon as we get aboard."

"Okay. Okay."

Farradyne nudged Norma with his elbow and whispered, "The cargo hold. We're pincered!"

He led her to the cargo hold and helped her down the service ladder. He followed, closing the door behind him; then, before he snapped out the dim lights, he reached up and removed one of them, saying, "I don't think we'll have an inspection, but if we do, one lamp missing will make a shadow that might help."

Huddled down in the corner of wall and floor, they sat with their feet pulled up beneath them, not daring to say a word. They waited in the dark silence, listening, and occasionally tensing when someone clumped past the wall outside or near the cargo hatch above their heads. There were voices and calls and running feet from time to time, and then the humming sound of the belt-conveyor.

The hatch above was opened wide but the lights were not snapped on.

From the end of the loose-cargo conveyor came tumbling a shower of love lotus blossoms. They landed on the floor in a conical pile and kept on coming until both Farradyne and Norma were sitting shoulder deep in the flowers. The air filled with the thick, syrupy perfume. Farradyne felt a dizziness from the heady odor and wondered with horrified interest just what effect this completely unpredictable overdose of dope would have on Norma.

The shower of hellflowers came on and on, and Farradyne was forced to stand up because of their depth. Still they came, and he found himself swimming in them; it reminded him of treading in a haymow. The rain of blossoms ceased as the hold filled, and the lights went on briefly for an inspection.

Farradyne was propped neck deep, his head barely below the ceiling, and he felt quite safe from detection unless the inspectors put their heads down into the hatch to peer around the edges of the cylindrical cargo hold. He looked at Norma. She had scrabbled up a-top of the pile and was lying on her back with her arms thrown up over her head. Her eyes were closed, but as she drew in a deep breath, the lids went half-up and she looked over at Farradyne and smiled.

The hatch slammed down, and she said, huskily, "Such nice friends you have, Charles. This is—" Her voice trailed away.

Pressure came upsurging and Farradyne knew that the Lancaster was on its way to space and perhaps back home. In the midst of the take-off pressure she found his hand and drew it towards her, snuggled her face against his palm. Her free hand came over and touched his cheek, then ran back around his head. She pulled him forward until she could rest her head against his shoulder.

She kissed his cheek, a brief invitation; then he could feel the soft breath from her lips, parted an inch or so from his, waiting.

His voice was harsh, "Invite me to make love to you after we get this affair settled and find you a cure."

Her lips cut off his voice, soft and warm and vibrant. Her fingers ran through his hair and pressed his face to her. He struggled a bit; his hands closed on either side of her waist but instead of moving away, her body came forward against his.

Then, abruptly, the pressure of the drive went off and they floated free.

Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released and the springiness of the hellblossoms thrust them up, hard, hurling them at the ceiling.

Norma's hands were dragged free of his head and, in clutching at him frantically, her fingernails raked his cheek slightly. The pressure he held against her waist thrust her away as soon as she lost her leverage. Her head hit the ceiling with a dull thunk. A sigh came from her lips—the sigh of an unconscious person.

The hold was filled with love lotus, floating free and spread apart by the tiny pressure of the ends of their leaves and petals; Farradyne fought them away frantically but only succeeded in digging himself deeper in the room.

Eventually he found the service ladder and clung to it, waving himself a breathing-space by pushing the floating blossoms back.

Norma's inert hand touched him limply.

Farradyne toyed with the idea of reviving her but gave it up instantly; let her sleep it off. He gave the hand a push and she floated from him in the dark.

The exertion had called upon his reserves and he drank in lungfuls of air that was sticky and cloying. It made him dizzy again. He scrabbled up the ladder and found the hatch, and opened it cautiously. It was as dark outside as it was inside. Farradyne pushed the hatch up more and put his face in the clean air and took a deep breath. Then, because he felt better, he climbed out of the hold and floated free in the air above the hatch. He grabbed a handrail and closed the hatch carefully with a breathed, "You like 'em, Baby, you breathe 'em until I get back!"

He sat in midair with one hand hooked around the rail and tried to think of what to do next.

After a while he prowled the cargo-hold level, floating along the circular corridor, knowing that it was not the safest thing to do, but preferring almost anything to a return to the hold.

An hour passed, and Farradyne was growing bolder by the moment. He had covered the entire lower level of his Lancaster and had stopped above his former hiding place, speculating.

He decided, and went floating upward through the ship until he came to the stateroom level. He floated around the corridor, noticing that the little flags that indicated that the door was locked from the inside were all down except one. One of his 'guests' did not trust his fellow-travellers. He wondered how many rooms, and which ones, contained the rest of the enemy gang.

He floated on upstairs to the salon and almost ruined his silent flight by trying to put on the brakes. On the divan lay a man, restrained by the hold-down safety-strap, sound asleep.

Farradyne floated over, and taking hold of the strap to keep himself from flying free with the motion, he deepened the man's slumber with a vicious chop of his hand.

He floated into the control room, where the silent and distant stars watched. Some of them were moving down, while the rest stood as immobile as he had always known them. He would have liked to stay and watch the effects of traveling faster than light, for the sky directly above was very strange in color and in constellation, but he had a job to finish.

He took a roll of two inch adhesive tape from the medical supplies and taped the unconscious man's wrists and ankles, and slapped on a length that covered the mouth. Then he went down to his own quarters and opened the door slowly.

A second man slept there; Farradyne slugged him and applied tape effectively and quickly.

That made two.

He considered the situation carefully. So long as his batting average stayed at one thousand percent he was in fine shape. The ship ran itself; there was nothing to watch; and so the crew did what all spacemen do: sleep. If he could catch them one by one—

He opened Stateroom One. It was empty.

That put a different light on things. Maybe this was not a fully-loaded transport. Maybe it was just like the average cargo-haul with only a couple of passengers.

He opened Stateroom Two and found it empty.

That sort of proved it. He opened Stateroom Three and found a man asleep in the bunk. He was stirring as Farradyne scanned the room, and he moved just as Farradyne launched himself across the cabin. Haste ruined his aim and his down-slashing hand clipped the enemy on the skull instead of hitting him alongside the ear. The man grunted and swung out blindly, hitting Farradyne and moving him up and away. Farradyne caught the upright of the bunk and stayed his free flight, levered himself around and swung again.

The enemy parried the blow and then let out a triple-tone roar. Farradyne pulled himself down and around, then kicked out with both feet, catching the enemy in the face and chest. The force drove the enemy deep into the mattress, from which he rebounded to fold up over the hold-down strap and flop up and down, limp, an inert mass caught between two springs. The same force drove Farradyne toward the open door.

His aim was still bad; his outsweeping hand caught the leading edge of the door and he and it swung on the hinges until he came flat against the wall behind the door. Then he fought his body around and came out of the stateroom feet first.

He caught at the handrail and stabilized his flight, then took notice of his surroundings.

A door down the hall opened and a man came sailing out. He caught sight of Farradyne and launched himself down the hall at the spaceman. Farradyne met him with a slash, which was parried by a block of the man's forearm against Farradyne's wrist. It stopped the enemy's flight, and tore Farradyne's hold loose.

Farradyne let the enemy peer down the barrel of his gun. "Hold it," he snapped.

The enemy, about to kick himself forward, took a firm hold on the handrail behind him and retracted his feet from against the wall.

"You can't get away with it, Farradyne."

Farradyne smiled grimly. "I can try, Brenner. So happy to meet you again."

XXIII

Warily he listened. There were no other sounds along the corridor but the one he expected, and soon the little flag on the lock went in and the door opened. Carolyn Niles came out in pajamas and coat, her eyes blinking slightly. "What's the—" Then she gasped. "Charles!"

"Howdedo. Any more hiding in the dark, Carolyn?"

"How did you get here?"

"I walked," he said flatly. He turned to Brenner. "You stay there, school-master. I'm scared to death and therefore a bit touchy."

Brenner shook his head, eyeing the gun. "Sure, you're scared. I'm scared, too."

"Relax—but do it slowly. Now turn around and make it hand over hand along toward the salon. You follow the gentleman," he said to Carolyn.

Farradyne followed them both, mentioning that if Brenner tried any tricks, Carolyn might get in the way of the shot intended for him. They went up the stairway, one, two, three, and floated into the salon, Farradyne having a bit of a time of it because of his full gun-hand. He hooked his legs around the guardrail and eyed them coldly.

"Carolyn, let's see how good a job you can do on Brenner's wrists with a chunk of this tape." He tossed the roll at her and she went to Brenner, who held his hands behind him while she ran tape around the wrists.

"I'd be willing to bet that's a slipshod job," said Farradyne. "But it will probably hold for a while. Carolyn, coast over here and sit in the straight chair."

Farradyne taped her to the chair by her wrists and ankles, and took a slight hitch in the hold-down strap. He added some security to Brenner's bonds and taped the man's ankles to the legs of the divan. Then he propped the still unconscious man up near Brenner and taped him similarly.

Now he took time to go below and collect the third man from his cabin and bring him up; the man struggled against the wide tape and glared at Farradyne over the plaster on his lips. Farradyne hurled him backside first at the divan and followed him, catching him on the rebound. He taped the man as he had the others, and then took a small flight to the bar, where he perched on top by hooking his feet around one of the bar stools.

"Aren't we a good-looking bunch?" he chuckled. "Shall we sing?"

"Stop it, Farradyne," snapped Brenner.

Farradyne's twisted smile faded.

"I'm telling who to do what, Brenner. We'll play this game according to my rules for a while."

"You can't get away with it."

"Nuts. I should think you would feel a bit awkward, for a conqueror."

"I can stand it for a time. But the sooner you free us, the—"

Farradyne laughed, one loud humorless bark. "So I'm still your prisoner?"

"In a way. You wouldn't want to die without telling what you know about us. You'll do anything to stay alive."

"You damn well bet! And I'll do anything to learn a bit more about it, too."

"You can't make me talk."

"Want to bet? I don't think I could squeeze anything out of you by torture, Brenner, but I have a hunch you'll sing loud and long after you watch me take Carolyn's fingernails off with long-nosed pliers, and listen to her screaming."

Carolyn looked at Farradyne coldly. "Charles, I don't think you have enough sadism to perform that operation on me."

Farradyne looked at her. He held enough dislike of what she stood for to do almost anything; but she was still a woman and he knew that she was right: he simply didn't have the requisite sadism. Even though it would be a just retribution.

Carolyn sniffed cynically, and Farradyne realized that he had mumbled the last few words of his thoughts. She repeated them: "Just retribution, perhaps, Charles—but have you the guts?"

He looked down at her. "No, it seems I haven't. But I've someone with me who might."

He took aim and sailed down the stairs. He soared around the stateroom corridor and ran full-tilt into someone coming the opposite way. He hurled the figure from him and recoiled, and when he caught himself again, he had one hand braced against the handrail and the pistol aimed at the middle of Norma's stomach. He let out his breath and relaxed his gun hand.

She looked at the gun and her face went white with the realization of how close it had been. She looked at him searchingly, as if seeking company for her fright. She apparently found it, for her face relaxed and she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she fought the hem of her skirt down again and blushed.

Farradyne chuckled shakily. "Go into Number Four and swipe a pair of Carolyn Niles' pajamas," he said. "They don't float. Then come on up to the salon."

He turned and headed back slowly, stalling until he heard her return to the corridor.

He went up first and helped her make the curve around the railing at the top. Solicitously, Farradyne steered her to the divan and fastened the seat-strap.

Then he faced Carolyn and the rest. "Speaking of retribution," he said slowly, "I'd like you to meet a woman I know. Miss Norma Hannon. She's a love-lotus addict, you know. Whatever she is and whatever she does is basically your own damned fault." He said directly to Carolyn, "I couldn't do it. But I think that Miss Hannon might enjoy a bit of an emotional binge with the people who fed her the first hellflower and caused the death of her brother."

Farradyne turned and sailed across the salon to land at Norma's side. He reached out and removed the love lotus from Norma's hair, and re-crossed the room to hurl it into the disposal chute.

"Just sit there quietly until the effects of that thing wear off," he told her. "I'm going to make a tour of inspection."

Farradyne turned and dived down the stairway again. He did not know how long it might take, especially after Norma had been literally sleeping in a smothering roomful of the things for hours. Probably take long enough for them all to get the whim-whams just thinking about it, he concluded.

He conned every stateroom on his way down. He was reasonably certain that the ruckus would have awakened them all, but he wanted to make sure that no one of them was lying doggo until he could make his bid. They were all empty. Farradyne went on down in the Lancaster, checking the supply-rooms, the galley, the workshop, the other cargo lock, the storage room. He looked into the inspection cubbies and wiring hatches until he had covered every nook and cranny in the Lancaster that was large enough to contain a human being.

The ship was clean.

He stopped once more to eye the four metal cases bolted to the floor. He went up, then, all the way.

"Any talk?" he asked brightly as he soared through the salon.

"Farradyne, you can't do this!" rasped Brenner.

Farradyne ignored him. Norma was still sitting on the divan, in the same position. But her face was losing its softness and her attention was no longer diverted so easily. "I'm waiting," she told him as he passed upward to the control room.

Somehow, Farradyne believed that she would not have very long to wait.

XXIV

Farradyne again ignored the oddness of the sky to examine the small auxiliary panel fastened to one edge of the main control panel. It contained a small meter calibrated in arbitrary units of three colors. The needle stood high, about three-quarter scale, in the middle of the blue region. Below the meter was the toggle switch, and on either side of the switch were flat buttons, blue to the right and red to the left. Behind the panel was a metal box; emerging from the box a cable no longer than a lead pencil snaked away into the maze of wiring behind the main equipment.

He considered the thing carefully. Booby traps were unlikely, but there were destruction-charges used to prevent the capture of secret equipment.

The destruction triggers usually were protected switches, placed in such a position and built in such a manner that when the crew wished to destroy their secret devices, they had to do it deliberately.

So Farradyne eyed the small panel critically and decided that while there must be some destruction-device included in such a highly secret piece of gear, it was not on the front panel where it might be pressed accidentally or in the heat of excitement. He was even certain that not very much could happen if he tinkered with the switches, so long as he was in space and a few light years from anything large and hard. It was also extremely unlikely that any gear of this sort would be easy to foul-up. The destruction of the gadget in space would leave the ship and crew marooned in the void between the stars.

He took the cross-bar toggle in his hand and pulled. It resisted his efforts, and so he tried pushing. It moved down in a wide arc and as he moved the switch down, the pressure of the drive suddenly caught up with the seat of his pants and Farradyne was sitting in his pilot's chair instead of floating above it by a fraction of an inch. He thrust the toggle all the way down and a full one-gravity of force came on.

Above his head the stars resumed their familiar appearance.

The needle on the meter stayed where it was, at three-quarter scale.

Farradyne chuckled aloud. He had it now. One button to start the equipment for warm-up period; the toggle to control its functioning; and the other button to cut the gear off when the flight was concluded. It was as simple as that, and although Farradyne had sat in many a spaceman's bar and heard arguments as to the possibilities of exotic operation of alien equipment, he knew that mechanical and electrical principles are universal and that their exploitation would most likely lead toward universal simplification.

Then, being practical, Farradyne dropped the subject and began to think about where he was, where he had come from, and where he was going. He put his eye to the point-of-drive telescope and caught a small star on the cross-hairs. This was undoubtedly Sol, considerably tinier than its appearance from Pluto, but of the right color. A true stellar point, it was, which meant that he must be light years from it.

He squinted through the point-of-departure periscope and cut the drive so that the flare would not blind him. Behind was the constellation of Lyra and on the cross-hairs was another tiny star of no particular consequence.

He got out his Spaceman's Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the listings were several semi-dwarfs of the F, G and K classifications and one of them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol, was located in the right position, so far as Farradyne could determine—

The sound of a whimper cut into his thoughts, and he remembered the possibilities of the scene down in the salon. He snapped on the intercom and listened, wondering whether he could actually sit there and let Norma go to work on Carolyn. Man's inhumanity to man was a pale and insignificant affair compared to the animal ferocity of a woman about to settle up a long-standing account with another woman.

His curiosity got the better of him. He sauntered down the stairs. Norma stood before the bound Carolyn, her eyes glassy and her face impersonal. In one hand she held a small bottle of acid from Farradyne's workshop and in the other hand she held a little pointed glass-bristle brush. As Farradyne came down the stairs, Norma dipped the brush in the acid and approached Carolyn, holding the brush as she would a pencil.

Farradyne said, "Wait."

Norma looked at him. "Don't stop me," she said. "I'm going to write 'Hellflower' across that alabaster forehead."

Farradyne shuddered. His imagination had stopped working at the point of removing fingernails and applying cigarettes to the skin. Now it leaped forward. A formerly flawless skin covered with scar-tissue lettering of accusals, viciousness, and probably lewdness.

"Are you ready to talk?" Farradyne asked Carolyn.

"I'll talk. I'll talk because you'll never get a chance to use the information."

"You talk, and I'll take my chances on that."

Norma frowned. "Please, Farradyne?"

"Maybe later," he said soothingly. "Go sit down and wait."

Norma turned and headed for the divan.

"Spill it," he said to Carolyn. "What the hell's going on, and why?"

"This is war," she said.

"Like hell it's war. This is backstabbing. But it'll be war as soon as we can fight back."

"It is war," she repeated. "The process should not be unfamiliar to you; you've done it yourselves time and again. First you weaken the enemy by undermining his resources, by lowering his resistance, by turning his efforts towards advancement against some stumbling block. Then—"

"I presume that doping the women of a race with hellflowers is an honorable practise?" sneered Farradyne.

"It is better than dropping a mercurite bomb. We got to interstellar space first and met another people as racially jealous as we are: your people. We could have made a landing openly, but if we had, the warfare you're threatening would have happened long ago. And there would be nothing left of either of our people but smouldering planets to mark the meeting-place of two stellar peoples."

"You can say this, knowing that no Solan has the barest inkling of how this doodad in the hold can permit us to travel faster than light?"

Carolyn looked at him contemptuously. "You're an idealist, Charles," she said. "I'll tell you what would happen. You'd greet us with cheers and invite us in—long enough to steal our warp-generator. You'd trade us your medical science for our chemistry and your electronics for our gravities, and then you'd meet us face to face to prove to yourselves that even though you got a second-place start, you could move faster and hit harder than we could. You'd carry your war to us, and we'd carry our war to you, and there would be cause and effect, and attack and retaliation, with each blow a bit more vicious until your people would be planting mercurite at the same time we were. And then, as I say, the next interstellar race to visit this region of the sky would find the radioactive remains of two ex-cultures. I know, because both our people come of the same stock."

"All right," he snapped. "So you've justified your actions to yourself."

"Of course. Everybody is self-justified."

"And you justify the doping of our race by calling it better than meeting us face to face."

"Remember your own history. Even before the First Atomic War everybody realized that warfare was a bankrupt measure, to be undertaken only after all else failed. You conducted your conflicts under cover, by boring from within, by undermining the national structure. Similarly, when your people have been lowered in resistance, we shall move in quietly and make of you an asset to our economy, instead of a ruined structure that must be helped."

"Wonderful. However, I don't cotton to the idea of being an abject supplicant to your superior kind."

There was a yelp from behind him and he whirled to see Norma Hannon about to letter something on Brenner's forehead.

He raced across the floor and caught her hand just before the acid-laden brush touched Brenner's skin. "Norma," he said quietly. "Don't."

She looked up at him reproachfully. "You promised me—"

"Later."

"That's what you're always saying," she complained. "Then all you do is talk a lot of guff with that female over there."

"Okay. I forgot." He turned to Brenner. "Next question: how do we navigate that ka-dodie of yours?"

Brenner laughed harshly. "You know so much, why don't you go ahead and try it?"

"Now, Farradyne?" pleaded Norma.

"Not yet. I'm going to try his suggestion." Farradyne inspected the tapings and satisfied himself. Then he turned toward the stairway.

"Wait," said Brenner testily. "Take her with you, dammit. I don't want my face lettered with words found in washrooms."

"Somehow it seems appropriate."

"All right. The toggle fades the generator on and off. The red button stops the equipment. The green button is for start. Wait until the meter reads in the upper block before using the toggle. The speed for this particular equipment is approximately two light years per hour in Solarian measurement. We're about six hours from Sol now. Go ahead and run us close to Sol so we can finish this gambit."

Farradyne took Norma by the hand and led her up the stairs. She protested and hung back—but once in the control room, she crossed briskly and turned the intercom so that sound from the salon would come through clear and strong, but sound from the control room would not go out. Then she turned from the panel and faced Farradyne with the beginning of a soft smile on her face.

"That was the hardest job I've ever had," she breathed.

Visibly, she relaxed. An aliveness came around her eyes and her mouth spread into a brief smile. She snapped her bottle of acid into one of the many spring-holds in the control room. Then she walked over to the co-pilot's seat and dropped into it. She rested, with her head tilted back.

Farradyne watched with puzzlement. "Norma," he asked, "how long after a sniff of love lotus does the effect last?"

"Seldom more than an hour. I have been free of it for quite some time."

"But you had a hell of a dose."

She took a deep breath. "I could feel it leaving," she said. "The effects faded after you took the flower out of my hair, but instead of fading away with a dulling of the senses, the urges I felt diminished without leaving me emotionless. I think I'm cured of it."

Farradyne recoiled a bit.

"No, Charles, this is no trick. This is not an attempt to lead you on. I'm cured, I think, honestly."

"But how?"

"One thing no one has tried is to place the addict in a veritable bath of the things. Perhaps that did it—an overdose—Anyway, it's wonderful to feel normal again." She sat up in the chair and leaned toward him. She reached for his hand and drew him forward and kissed him on the lips. For a moment they clung together, then she moved away from him slowly. "It's all back again," she said quietly. "The quickened pulse and the pleasant tingle. I'm a woman again, Charles. Let's go home so I can enjoy it."

It was almost too good to be true—but it had to be.

Farradyne gave her hand a squeeze. "Done!" he said. His other hand lifted the cross-bar toggle, and the pressure of the springed seats threw them up against their hold-down straps.

Two light years an hour. Farradyne ran the Lancaster for exactly six hours and then cut the superdrive. Together, they inspected the heavens and found a brilliant yellow star on their quarter. Farradyne turned the Lancaster to face it and raised the toggle slowly; Sol changed color, racing toward the blue and the violet first, then turning a dull red and raising through the spectrum again until it became violet once more. It went through another spectrum-change and grew in size like a toy balloon hitched to a high-pressure air line, until its flare frightened the pilot. He shoved the toggle down and Sol winked back into the familiar disc of blinding white, about the size as seen from Mars.

Farradyne oriented himself, consulted the spaceman's ephemeris and pointed at a large unwinking point. "Home," he said.

Two light years an hour. Farradyne went to the computer and made some calculations. He returned, pointed the Lancaster at Terra and flicked the toggle up and down, counting off a few seconds for drive. Sol whiffled past, changing in color as its position changed in the astrodome; and when Farradyne drove the toggle down, Terra was a distinct disc in the sky above them.

XXV

Farradyne said, "Norma, hike below and see that our visitors stay taped to their chairs. I'm going to land this crate without interference."

Norma nodded and went down to the salon. "They're still penned," she reported over the Intercom.

Farradyne said "Aye-firm," and then made his first ranging-radar contact with Terra. He set his declaration drive accordingly and the integrator-needle crept over to the center-scale zero, informing Farradyne that zero separation from the surface of the spaceport would result in zero velocity of the Lancaster.

Then Farradyne fired up the radio and called: "Washington Tower. This is a Lancaster Eighty-One requesting landing instructions. Registry Six Eight Three. Farradyne piloting."

"Tower to Six-Eight-Three. Take Beacon Nine at one twenty thousand, Landing Area Five. Traffic is zero-zero, but eight, repeat, eight, Spaceguard cutters are in formation at sixty thousand." The voice changed in tone slightly. "Spaceguard, Code Watchung. Calling Watchung."

"Watchung to Tower, go ahead."

"Tower. Watchung, ware away from Beacon Nine. Lancaster Eighty-One coming in. Give position and course."

"Watchung to Tower: position azimuth six-seven zero, altitude sixty thousand, distance nine miles. Course twenty-seven North azimuth. Will miss Beacon Nine by thirty-three miles. Recheck?"

"Recheck and aye-firm, Watchung. Tower to Six-Eight-Three: did you follow that?"

"Aye-firm!" called Farradyne.

"Watchung to Six-Eight-Three: pilot identify yourself."

"Pilot Farradyne here, Watchung."

"Aye-firm. Watchung Five, assume command of Six, Seven, and Eight. Take alert pattern at two hundred thousand feet and stand by, Watchung Two, Three, and Four compute and take closing course on Six-Eight-Three and convoy to Landing Area Five. Farradyne, prepare to accept convoy."

"Deny, Watchung. Request reason."

"Prepare to accept inspection, Six-Eight-Three."

Farradyne growled angrily and dropped the radio formalities. "Why?" he snapped.

"You are suspected of hauling a cargo of love lotus. Prepare to stand inspection upon landing."

From down in the salon came the sound of cynical laughter. Brenner said, "We'll let your own people punish you, Farradyne. Hellblossom running, resisting arrest, kidnaping, operating with a forged license, a ship with a questionable registry!"

Farradyne knew what Brenner meant. Taped tight in his ship were Carolyn Niles, daughter of one of Mercury's leading citizens, and a schoolteacher named Hughes. There would be a lot of other witnesses prepared to perjure him into three hundred years of hard labor on Titan. He wondered how the enemy managed this; certainly they had not been prepared to lose their captured spacecraft so quickly. Yet the counter-preparations looked as though such an eventuality had been expected.

"Six-Eight-Three, respond!"

Farradyne snapped his mike-switch and said, "I resent the accusation, and demand an explanation!"

"There is no accusation, Farradyne. We have an anonymous tip-off. You are not accused of illegal operations, only suspect. Will you permit inspection?"

"No!" snapped Farradyne. "Deny!"

"Code Watchung: intercept Six-Eight-Three! Prepare to fire."

"Fire and be damned," said Farradyne in a growl. His hand reached for the toggle and shoved it home for ten seconds. When he turned the ultradrive off, they were far a-space and the radio was silent.

"Give it up, Charles," said Carolyn from below.

"Go to hell!"

Brenner said, "You might as well, Farradyne. No matter how you figure it, you'll either be grabbed by your own people or get picked up by ours. We can't lose."

Going below, Farradyne faced them. "And what happens if I dump you out of the spacelock and your cargo of hellflowers with you?"

"You could do that to Cahill," said Carolyn, "because Cahill was not registered as a paying passenger. I am, and when the authorities find me missing you'll be called to account."

"Just what do you suggest?" Farradyne asked.

"Surrender and turn this ship over to us. You will be detained as a prisoner of war and imprisoned among your own kind."

"Doing what kind of prison labor? Growing hellflowers?"

"Not at all. That, we wouldn't consider ethical."

"It's a cockeyed code of ethics you jerks have," growled Farradyne. "I suppose you want a gold medal for doping our women instead of dropping mercurite bombs and killing them."

"Let's not discuss ethics now. Surrender, and you'll be placed on a Terra-conformed planet, with every freedom among your own kind except the right to space flight."

"No, thanks," said Farradyne dryly. "I had four years of slogging in a fungus marsh. I'm disinclined to give up after one miss. It—"

"Charles!" cried Norma through the squawk-box. "Radar trace!"

Farradyne turned and raced up the stairs just in time to see the long green line of the radar settling down to a solid signal-pip at the extreme end. He flipped the switch that coupled the telescope to the radar and looked through the eye-piece. At the extreme range of the radar beam was a spacecraft, either the same starship that had chased him before or its sister ship. It was closing in fast.

Farradyne dropped into his chair and snapped the belt. He turned the Lancaster by ninety degrees and grasped the toggle on the ultradrive. Ten seconds later he resumed normal flight for a few seconds and then, at another angle, used the ultradrive again.

He paused long enough to take his space bearing, and then plunged the ship down between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, far to the South of the ecliptic.

"Norma," he asked quietly, "who is Howard Clevis' boss?"

"Howard reports to Solon Forester directly."

"Oh, fine," groaned Farradyne. "Getting to the Solon is no picnic. How do we go about it?"

A flick of color caught his eye and he turned to look at the radar. The line had wiggled slightly and as he watched, its extreme end formed into a signal-pip. Farradyne looked through the telescope and saw the starship again—or another one. Whether they had one with supervelocity tracking methods, or several hundred covering the solar system like an interception net, it made no difference. The enemy was on his trail.

Farradyne played with the high-space drive again and cut some more didoes back and forth across space, ending up this time not too far from Mercury.

From below there came a rapid conversation in multi-tones, like someone dusting off the keys on a pipe organ played in mute.

Farradyne swore, and then he sat there looking at the big chronometer on the wall, counting off the seconds. Seventy of them went under the sweep hand before the radar trace hiked up into the same, familiar extreme-range warning.

Deliberately, Farradyne turned his ship towards Terra and hit the ultradrive. "They called me a hot-pants pilot," he gritted.

Yellow-green Terra raced up and up and up through the spectrum and burst in size from an unwinking pinpoint of light to a shockingly-large disc that zoomed towards them. They saw its roundness come out of the sky in a myriad of colors until it filled the dome above them. Norma screamed; but by the time her voice had stopped echoing through the control room, Terra was past them by a good many miles of clean miss, and Farradyne had cut the ultradrive. He grunted unhappily because he was now as far from Terra on the other side as he had been before he took the chance. This mad use of the enemy ultradrive in ducking around the solar system was like trying to make a fifty-ton clamshell digger split a cigarette paper. At two light years per hour, their speed was enough to take them from Sol to Pluto in one second flat. He could not control it finely enough to do more than zoom off out of sight of the starship.

Farradyne shrugged, and patted Norma on the shoulder. "I doubt that my aim is good enough to hit the thing," he said. He turned the Lancaster end for end abruptly and tried a quick flick of the toggle. Once more Terra leaped at them, a swirling kaleidoscope of color, looming into monster size and then flicking past.

When they came out of it, Terra was behind them by a few million miles. Farradyne thought for a moment. "Maybe we—" he reached out and pressed the red button on the auxiliary panel—"are being tracked by the generator doodad they put below."

"But what are we going to do now?"

"Hit for Terra!"

XXVI

Farradyne set the drive for Terra and then sat there, tense and waiting. The radar wiggled into its warning trace, almost dead ahead.

They moved to intercept him, but Farradyne raised the drive to four gravities and plunged on. The starship grew, and behind it Terra grew. The radio burst into sound and Farradyne grabbed the microphone and said, "Come and get me, fellows!"

"Stop," came the demand, "or we fire!"

"I've been fired at by experts," said Farradyne. "Start a shooting-match out here and you'll have all of Terra wondering why the fireworks."

"Stop!"

Farradyne touched a lever. "Maybe you'd like to polish a few rivets?"

The Lancaster turned ever so slightly until the starship was directly on the point-of-drive. His other hand touched the drive and the acceleration increased a bit. Caustically, Farradyne said, "Go ahead and shoot! You'll find your own living room full of by-products if you do!"

He was right. The Lancaster was on collision course with the starship and if the Lancaster was blasted at this moment, shards and fragments of the spacecraft would spread like a shotgun charge. If the starship escaped being hit with a rather uncomfortably large mass of jagged metal it would be sheer luck.

"Veer off!" came the strident cry.

The starship moved aside. Farradyne's hands levered his handles with a velvet touch and the starship of the enemy returned to the cross-hairs.

"Veer off!"

"I'm going to ram, goddam you!" roared Farradyne.

The starship flared at its tail and at the same time a torpedo-port winked as a missile blasted-off. Farradyne gauged the missile and the starship and kept his nose on the starship's lead. Gritting his teeth, he watched the missile come at him; and at the last moment the missile veered aside, obviously controlled. It was a war of nerves; the enemy did not dare hit him at this moment and on this course, but they hoped to scare him.

The starship loomed big in the astrodome and Farradyne aimed the Lancaster amidships. The interstellar monster grew rapidly until the individual plates could be seen; then with a silent, dark flicker that was as shocking as a loud blast and a searing flare of light might have been, the starship ceased to exist as an obstacle in front of them. The enemy had resorted to the ultradrive. The sky was clear—

Except for the missile, seeking them and with no control to stop it.

It had curved in a vast circle behind them and was now closing in on a curving course.

Dead ahead was Terra, looming huge; the tactic of the enemy was clear. In order to escape the missile Farradyne would have to drive hard and long, which would carry him far beyond Terra and into the hands of another enemy ship on the other side of home. To turn and attempt a landing would be to invite atomic death in the depths of space far above the planet.

He chuckled, and Norma looked at him wonderingly.

"Get set for some terrific acceleration," he said. "Hunker down in the seat!"

His hands ran across the board. The Lancaster turned slightly and the drive went up and up. The flare brightened and lengthened behind them, aimed at the missile below.

The missile followed its homing gear and came speeding up the reaction-flare. The Lancaster drive was a reaction motor, a rocket with a reaction mass of water heated by the atomic pile to an energy that cracked the water down to sheer gamma and particle radiation and tossed it rearward into a condition where the word 'heat' has no meaning unless there is some body able to absorb the ravening energy.

The missile absorbed the energy.

Its nose melted and its homing circuits mingled with the flare of the Lancaster's drive; then there was a minute puff as the missile was consumed before its atomics could be joined in fission.

Farradyne cut the drive and took a deep breath; but his relief didn't last long. Terra was before him, a monstrous blue-green globe just to one side—close—close—

Beyond, the enemy ship was waiting.

The thin scream of atmosphere cried at their ears and there came a braking pressure that threw them against their seat straps. The accelerometer went crazy, reaching for the peg-stop on the left.

The blood rushed to their heads and Farradyne fought the pressure that tried to raise his arms.

Then the screaming stopped as the Lancaster passed beyond the atmosphere into space again. Farradyne hit the drive hard again.

But if the enemy was expecting him to come past on a line-course, they were wrong. The touch of the upper air, thin as it was, had deflected the Lancaster's course into a long ellipse and hurled the ship far to one side of the expected line of flight. The course wound out and around and back and plunged the ship into the upper air again. Terra rotated madly below and then dropped beneath the level of the edge of the control room dome as the Lancaster speared out into space once more. Again they went out and around and down into the upper air, and this time they went around in a tight ellipse with the air screaming at them all the way. Four times around Terra they went, and then Farradyne turned the tail of the Lancaster straight down and started to drop like a plummet.

He was kept busy checking the controls and the autopilot and the computing radar altimeter as he aimed the Lancaster for the southern edge of Lake Superior; they came down in a screaming fall like a meteorite.

The flare parted the waters of the lake and sent up a billow of steam for about a hundredth of a second. Then the autopilot cut the drive and the violence ceased as the Lancaster sank into the deep cool waters, to stop, to come rising buoyantly towards the surface again.

Farradyne hit the switch that opened the scuttlebutt of the water tanks and the lake waters rushed in, killing buoyancy.

The astrodome porpoised once, gently, and then the Lancaster sank very slowly. Farradyne waited until the ship was resting tail down on the bottom; then he turned it slightly to one side and opened the drive by a bare fraction. Water churned below them and the ship moved loggily sidewise, towards the shore. He spent an hour testing and trying the depth along the shore until he found a place that was just deep enough to let the Lancaster stand upright with its dome an inch or two below the surface.

A small fish goggled hungrily at the shining metal.

Farradyne stretched and said, "We got this far anyway!"

Norma looked at him dizzily. "How?"

"My pappy used to tell me about this sort of come-in," he said. "Seems as how he once knew a gent who had piloted one of the old chemical rockets that used braking ellipses for landings. That was a heck of a long time ago, before we had power to burn. Anyway, it wasn't expected, because we succeeded."

"Now what?"

Farradyne tuned the radio to a local broadcast station, and waited, relaxing in his seat, until the music stopped and the latest news flashes came on. Then the announcer said, "The system-wide hunt for Charles Farradyne, the notorious love-lotus operator, still goes on. The search has been narrowed down to North America because of several reports, some official and some unofficial, of activity a-space in this region.

"Farradyne is also to be charged with complicity in the disappearance of Howard Clevis, high undercover operative for the Sand Office. It is believed in some circles that Farradyne may be much higher in the love-lotus ring than a mere handler or distributor. Some officials have indicated that Farradyne may be Mister Big, himself.

"An early interception and arrest is anticipated. Keep tuned to this station for the latest news."

The music returned.

XXVII

Brenner said, "Very neat. Glad you made it." His smile was serene, and it made Farradyne want to push his face in. Brenner grinned at Farradyne's expression. "I wouldn't like to die in space. Now that we've landed it's going to be easier to pick you up."

"No doubt you have your henchmen neatly planted in many of the high offices. But you can't cover them all."

"But how can you tell which is which?" laughed Brenner. "And if you could, how could you prove it? If you should be stupid enough to try to point out the number of people who are plotting your downfall, who are trying to apprehend you—dead or alive—you'll sound like a howling case of paranoia."

Carolyn stirred and groaned. Farradyne looked at her as she opened her eyes. "Can't take it, eh? But how you can dish it out!"

"Where are we?" groaned Carolyn.

"Wouldn't tell you on a bet," he snapped. "You might be telepathic as well as multi-tonal. I—"

Farradyne's eye caught a flicker of motion and he whirled. The other two men were struggling against the tape that bound their wrists and ankles; they glared at him over the white strip of tape beneath their noses, and made three-toned honking noises.

"Shut up!" roared Farradyne.

They stopped struggling.

Brenner said, "Just what do you hope to do?"

"I've got my ideas." Farradyne lit a cigarette and relaxed. "We'll wait until dusk to be sure," he said.

Hourly, the radio went on telling how Farradyne was being cornered. Radar nets and radio-contact squadrons were scouring the North American continent with special attention being given to the North Middle-West. Another report said, "Charles Farradyne, sought for many charges involving love-lotus operations, is implicated in the disappearance of Carolyn Niles, according to her family. Her father indicated that Miss Niles did not return home after a date with the criminal. Be careful! This criminal is cornered and desperate. He will not hesitate to shoot, and he may even bomb a village or neighborhood if his freedom is threatened!"

Brenner and Carolyn did not even jeer at him. The situation was obvious; Farradyne and his white flag would be shot to bits before he could take three steps, let alone make explanations.

By now it was dark outside. The stars were bright above the dome, and danced with the motion of the water. To one side a wavy trail passed across the sky, and high above was the flicker of a space patrol crossing the sky at fifty or sixty miles. The radio was alive with reports, and the police bands were busy with their myriad of reports and directions. Farradyne pricked off their calls on a map, with a drawing pencil. Ground and air patrols were combing a vast area. For a very brief interval, Farradyne could hear a distant network in operation which indicated that the same sort of search was under way in other districts across the face of the continent.

He inspected his map and hoped he had them all. Then, very cautiously, he lifted the nose of the Lancaster above the waterline and eyed his radar. Pips showed here and there, a couple within a few miles of him. He waited until they turned away, waited until they went beyond the radar horizon.

"Now," said Farradyne for all of them to hear. "I can't do this job fair, so I'll do it foul!"

Using just enough power to waft the Lancaster into the air, Farradyne placed the ship in a gully a few hundred yards from a state highway. The trees covered it from direct observation at night and the flat hills and ravines would cover it from radar detection.

It was almost two o'clock in the morning when a lonely moving van came along the highway. The brakes screeched as the driver caught sight of a crumpled body lying by the road. Redness smeared along a length of white thigh, uncovered by a ripped skirt. More redness dribbled wetly from a corner of Norma's mouth. The driver piled out of one door and his helper from the other. They ran to kneel by the woman's side.

Then they smelled the ketchup and stood up, raising their hands promptly in anticipation of the command.

"That's not blood spilled," said the driver loudly. "Let's keep it that way, whoever you are."

The driver's helper said, "This is a bum job, friend. We're carting second-hand furniture, not gold."

"I don't want your load," said Farradyne, stepping into the glare of the headlights while Norma got up and dusted herself off. "I want your truck."

They looked at him and he saw recognition in their faces. Probably every newscast had his picture presented in full color.

"What's the next move, Farradyne?" asked the driver in a surly tone. "Do we take the high jump?"

"No, I just want your truck. Driver, what's your name?"

"Morgan. This is Roberts."

"Morgan, you drive the truck down into that ravine, and Roberts will play hostage. Get it?"

"Behave, Al," pleaded Roberts.

"I will, but I think we'll get bumped anyway."

Morgan got into the truck and drove it slowly from the road, down through the trees, until they came to the Lancaster. Both men goggled at the ship parked there, and Farradyne, who had walked alongside with Roberts and Norma, let them look at it for a moment. Then he waved his gun. "Unload it," he said sharply.

It took them an hour to move the load from the truck to the ground, and Farradyne spent that hour in nervous watching. He could not trust them not to make a break, nor could he hope to explain. When the van was emptied, he faced Roberts against it and said, "Norma, tape Morgan's hands behind him; then Roberts'. Then we unload our cargo."

The two truckmen glowered as the conveyor belt came out of the cargo lock and the white hellflower blossoms tumbled along it to drop into the back of the van. Farradyne left them sitting there on the ground after the loading was finished. He and Norma went into the salon and he faced Brenner. "Better take this quietly," he said.

The radio made him pause:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the late news: the system-wide search for Charles Farradyne is hurrying to a close. Indications are now that the infamous love-lotus chief is hiding in the Lake Superior Region, and all forces are being hurried to that area to create the most leakproof dragnet in the history of man's man-hunts. A special session of the planning committee of the Solar Anti-Narcotic Department has been called to deal with the problem. Any information pertaining to Charles Farradyne may be delivered by picking up your telephone and calling Sand, One-thousand.

"This information is being disseminated freely. We know that Farradyne is listening to this broadcast, and the Sandmen have instructed all radio stations and networks to deliver the following announcement:

"To Charles Farradyne: A reward of fifty thousand dollars has been offered for your capture dead or alive. You cannot escape. The forces that are blanketing the Lake Superior Area are being augmented hourly by additional men and matériel brought in from all corners of the solar system. You will be arrested and brought to trial for your life. However, the reward of fifty thousand dollars will be turned over to you to be used in your own defense if you surrender at once."

Farradyne grunted. "Very tasty dish," he said sourly. "Very competent people you have, boys and girl. Someone really thought that one out most thoroughly. Can you picture me walking up to a patrol and saying, 'Fellers, I've come to give myself up so I can have the reward.' And then I'd go in, sure enough—on a shutter, and the patrol would divide the loot. To hell with you, we'll play it my way. Norma, go ahead."

Norma slipped off one high-heeled shoe and advanced upon Brenner. The enemy agent tried to shy away, but Farradyne went over and caught his head between the palms of the hands and held Brenner fixed. Norma swung the slipper and crashed the heel against Brenner's jaw.

Brenner slumped, and the heelprint on his jaw oozed a dribble of blood mixed with mud.

Farradyne slung Brenner over his shoulder and carried the inert man out. He propped Brenner in the helper's seat and handed Norma into the driver's seat. He stood on the running-board and watched Norma strip the tape from Brenner's wrists and replace it with fresh tape from the truck's own first-aid kit.

"The ankles too," he warned her. "You've got to cover up the tape-burns."

Norma taped Brenner's ankles. Then she looked up at Farradyne. "I'm shaky."

"I know," he said. "But you've got to hold yourself together until this gambit is played out."

She smiled wanly. "That's what's holding me together," she told him. "Charles, wish me luck?"

He leaned into the truck window and put his lips to hers. It was a very pleasant kiss, and while they both knew that this was their first kiss of real affection and mutual confidence, it lacked a compelling passion. But for the present it was satisfying, and complete.

Then Farradyne swung down from the truck with a wave of his hand and Norma put the big engine in gear with a grind that set his teeth on edge.

The truck turned onto the highway and roared off into the night.

Morgan said, "What do we do now?"

"We wait in the spacer," Farradyne replied.

XXVIII

They went up the landing ramp and into the salon; the truckmen stopped short as they saw Carolyn and the other pair.

"Quite a collection you have here," said Morgan. "Is this Carolyn Niles?"

"I am," replied Carolyn. "Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Morgan showed her his taped wrists. "Not in this garland."

Farradyne smiled and left them. He went aloft and returned the Lancaster to the lake. "Now," he said, "we'll wait it out."

Morgan shook his head. "With the net they've set up you'll never see your girl or your truck or your hellflowers again."

"Maybe I want it that way."

"Oh? Putting the finger on the bird you carted out of here?"

"Precisely."

"And how about the dame?"

Farradyne laughed. "In this cockeyed society of ours," he said, "even a streetwalker can rip her dress open, point at a man, and holler 'help!' and half of the community will start yelling 'Lynch the sonofabitch' without looking too hard at either of them. She'll get by, but it may go hard with him."

Morgan and Roberts were scornful, angry, and ready at any instant to do whatever they could to overcome him. Only the tape kept them from trying. But on Carolyn's face was an expression of mingled defeat and admiration. She knew as well as Farradyne that Brenner was in for a rough time.

Farradyne lit a cigarette and mixed himself a highball. Carolyn groaned and tried to flex the wrists that were secured to the arms of the chair. Morgan growled at the sight of her helplessness and asked if Farradyne had harmed her.

Her face took on a cynical smile. "I happen to be immune to love lotus," she said.

"Scorpions," said Farradyne, "are immune to their own poison."

Once again the radio music faded: "And here is the latest news on Charles Farradyne: within the past half hour the area of search has been narrowed down to a tiny ten-mile circle, by the interception of a moving van laden with love lotus. The arrest was made by a state highway patrol with the aid of a woman who gave her name as Norma Hannon.

"Miss Hannon was in a state of hysterical collapse after days of imprisonment at the hands of the love-lotus ring, brutal physical assault, and threats of being forced into love-lotus addiction. The driver of the truck was carrying a license made out to Walter Morgan, but information from the Bureau of Identification indicates that Morgan is also known as Lewis Hughes, a prominent teacher of Ancient History in a Des Moines school. During the struggle Miss Hannon succeeded in rendering the criminal unconscious by hitting him on the jaw with her slipper, after which she taped—"

Farradyne chuckled. "You see?"

Morgan grunted: "My license!"

Roberts cried: "Our truck!"

Carolyn said, "And what's it got you, Charles?"

"—the first-aid kit," went on the announcer. "Morgan or Hughes is being held on a John Doe warrant, charged with love-lotus possession, abduction, illegal restraint, assault and battery, and driving an interstate truck with an improper license.

"Miss Hannon collapsed after driving the truck to within sight of the dragnet set out for Farradyne. Her statement will be taken by the Sand Office as soon as she has recovered. The point of hospitalization has been kept secret by the Sandmen, who are now confident of an early arrest. Indications are that Hughes or Morgan (also known occasionally as Carl Brenner) has turned state's evidence and is willing to inform on his racket-boss Farradyne."

"Hah!" said Carolyn nastily.

"Did you a lot of good, didn't it, Farradyne?" snarled Morgan.

Farradyne ignored Morgan and spoke to Carolyn. "Unless Norma is being tended by someone of your gang, this is the end, baby."

She eyed him superciliously. "How long will they believe her after they discover she's a love-lotus addict herself?"

"She isn't. She's cured, remember?"

Carolyn laughed. "Everybody knows there is no cure."

"And how about our pal Brenner-Hughes-Morgan?"

"You leave me out of this!" snapped Morgan.

"Sorry," said Farradyne with a smile. "I didn't mean to include you, Walter."

Carolyn said in a confident voice, "Brenner is one of us. He is just as willing to die for our cause as—"

A searchlight swept across the lake and its light, refracted downward from the waves, caught Farradyne's eye. He left them in the salon and raced up the stairs to the control room. Through the astrodome, distorted by the water, Farradyne could see the headlamps of the big truck. The searchbeam crossed the water again and flashed ever so briefly on the slender rod of the antenna. The truck paused in its course, the beam swept the woody shore and stopped; then the truck turned and rumbled off through the trees.

The radio music died again. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to bring you a very unusual program. John Bundy, our special events newscaster, has joined the forces scouring the Lake Superior region for Charles Farradyne. Inasmuch as an early arrest is expected, and possibly a running gun battle, John Bundy will now take the air with an on-the-spot account. Mr. Bundy:

"Hello; this is John Bundy. Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar, and radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the Northwoods for the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to the point of Farradyne's operations, according to the information given us by the arrested truck driver. Sand and mud from Miss Hannon's shoes correspond to the district.

"Flying above us now are eight squadron bombers carrying heavy depth-charges, since Farradyne is believed to be hiding his spacecraft in the waters of Lake Superior. A submarine from the Great Lakes Geodetic Survey has been hastily equipped with some ranging sonar from the War Museum at Chicago and is seeking Farradyne's submerged spacecraft. It—"

There came a distant crash in the radio and seconds afterwards the Lancaster resounded with the thunder of an underwater explosion.

"One of the depth-charge patterns has been dropped," explained Bundy excitedly. "Perhaps this is—no, it is not. Sorry. The submarine has covered the explosion area and reported only an underwater mountain peak instead of a hidden spacecraft. Nothing will be left unsearched—"

A thin, pure, ping, of a pitch, so high it was at the upper limit of Farradyne's hearing, came and lasted for less than a tenth of a second. It came again in about twenty seconds, and repeated itself in twenty seconds, and again and again and again. The interval dropped; the volume of the ping increased noticeably until the singing tinkle, something like tapping a silver table knife on a fine glass goblet, was coming fast.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Farradyne looked above and saw the sky-trails of jet bombers, making ghostly patterns in the night sky. There came another flash of the searchbeam against the antenna. Ping! Get through, wherever you are!

Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook the big ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water oozed through the sealing of the astrodome.

The pinging came louder.

Underwater bursts racketed and flashed and hurled their gouts of force against the Lancaster, coming closer.

The radio was rambling on and on as John Bundy gave the world a blow-by-blow description of the action.

"—to those people who have stood out against the expenditure of monies for arms and training, I say they should witness this attack upon an enemy of society. They are evacuating the area, now. Farradyne is trapped and unless he surrenders within the next half hour, atomic weapons will be used. And then we will never learn the thoughts of the mind that has directed the decay of the moral fiber of our people. We will never know why a man, given the opportunities that many finer men have been denied, chose as his life's work—"

Carolyn laughed hysterically and Farradyne went below for a look.

Morgan and Roberts were waiting on either side of the door; they fell upon him and pinned him to the deck and held him there, and Carolyn stood above him gloatingly.

The Lancaster shook with the throb of depth-charges.

XXIX

Farradyne struggled against his captors. He'd been as blind a fool as he always had been, to let them sit there together. "Let me up!" he stormed. "Let me up so we can escape—"

"Shut the hell up!"

Farradyne struggled.

There was a blasting roar that stunned them all; it shook the Lancaster viciously. The trickle-sound of water through the astrodome was covered by the ear-splitting thunder, but when the tumult died the trickle had become a full stream that came running down the control room stairway in a cataract.

There came another blast, closer still. The lights flickered as the shock of the ship snapped the relays back and forth. Carolyn cried, "Hurry!"

The enemy pilot, lame and cramped from hours of being taped, struggled up the stairs. A moment later, deep in the ship, relays and circuit breakers clicked home.

Farradyne roared, "You fools! Stop that guy aloft! Why do you think I sent Norma Ha—"

Morgan cuffed him backhanded and drove his head hard against the deck. His senses reeled and the sheer physical shock of the next burst made his head roll from side to side.

An upsurge of pressure told Farradyne that the enemy pilot had started to take off from the lake bottom. Flashes of bursting explosive winked at the ports; then the blasts came less shockingly loud as the Lancaster hiked into the open air.

Farradyne fought himself awake. "Let him escape and we—"

Carolyn's shrill laugh drowned his weak voice.

The radio went on, as accursedly unanswerable as always:

"Farradyne's spacecraft has been trapped and fired upon, and now has been flushed from cover. The criminal is hoping to flee through the most thorough sky-cover that has ever been assembled. He cannot hope to win through, ladies and gentlemen. I wish we had video here in the early morning light, so that you could see this vivid spectacle of the eternal battle between the forces of good and evil!

"But we'll all be there when Farradyne goes down to the death in flame he so richly deserves. Above him now are the jet bombers and above them are squadron upon squadron of Terran Space Guard ships, and above them lie the Interplanetary Space Guard to fire the final coup de grace if Farradyne can run this gauntlet of righteous wrath that far.

"His flare trail is dimmed by the pinpoints of flashing death that seek him out. On every side of me are ships spewing torpedoes, guided missiles with target-seeking radar in their sleek noses, that will end this reign of terror once they find their mark. It—"

The radio clicked audibly and a forceful voice came on:

"Attention! Attention all listeners! Attention Spacecraft Lancaster and Charles Farradyne! This is the office of The Secretary of Solar Defense, Undersecretary Marshall White speaking. All persons, whether official or unofficial, whether citizen or military, are hereby charged with the safety of Charles Farradyne and the Lancaster model Eighty One in Farradyne's possession. This is a 'Cease Fire' order. All persons are hereby ordered to offer Charles Farradyne whatever he may request in the nature of manpower, machinery, supplies, protection, and safe-conduct; so that he may deliver his spacecraft to the Terran Arsenal at Terra Haute, Indiana."

Morgan scowled at Farradyne.

Carolyn cried, "Friends in the high places!"

The undersecretary's voice went on: "Within the hour, Miss Norma Hannon, onetime associate of Howard Clevis, undercover agent attached to this office on free duty, has presented irrevocable evidence to show that the love-lotus operations have been part and parcel of an unsuspected plot against humanity by denizens of an extra-solar culture. Since Farradyne's spacecraft contains the only known device enabling matter to exceed the velocity of light, its delivery to the Arsenal is deemed Top Priority. All persons are charged—"

Farradyne shrugged himself out of the grip of the truckmen. "Get the hell aloft and grab that bastard running the ship!" he snarled at them.

The other enemy rushed forward. Roberts caught a hard fist on the jaw and reeled back. Farradyne chopped in a wide swing with the edge of his hand and sent the enemy back against the little bar in the salon. Morgan looked stunned, but he turned and started for the stairway at a dead run.

"So I couldn't get through?" asked Farradyne bitterly. "So I'm licked?"

Carolyn looked at him, but said nothing. The stillness outside was so marked that her silence was almost painful after the noise of the bombardment.

Then she shrugged. "You poor fool! You've just bought your own doom."

"So," said Farradyne, "by digging out the rats that gnaw at our roots we've toppled our tree?"

Carolyn nodded soberly. "We'd hoped to win you by stealth, but we're prepared. The starships are loaded with mercurite right now."

"I hate to start quoting Patrick Henry," snapped Farradyne. "So I'll just suggest that you think over the reason why they want me at the Arsenal."

She looked at him.

"We've always been handy with a screwdriver," he said. "Our race. And we know we couldn't copy this drive before the mercurite starts to fall. But there is enough time to load up my Lancaster and take it out." He roared with harsh laughter. "You didn't mind dying if you could take me with you. Well, maybe Solans won't mind dying if we can rid the universe of a bunch of lice, either."

"And what alternative do you offer?" she whispered, white-faced.

"Complete surrender," he snarled. "Complete surrender!" And then he recalled the history he had been forced to learn as a schoolboy: history, a subject of dry dates and dry events, a factual symposium of war and war and war—of conflict and hatred and death. Then had come the realization of Peace, which started to turn the course of history from attack and reprisal, and war and defeat, and victor and vanquished. A just peace, started in the Twentieth Century, which ended oppression and subjection.

Farradyne looked at Carolyn with a cynical smile. "We demand unconditional surrender," he said bitterly. "Then we move in and number off your people. With a careful tally of our own losses, we choose a similar number from a fish-bowl. So many men to be cold-bloodedly murdered. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives left without husbands, and so many husbands left without wives. Children to such-and-such a number left homeless, and a certain quantity made to stand in the street so that automobiles can run them down." His voice rose to a roar. "Damn it, woman, do you think we're vultures? You've pushed us around for fifty years, but now you know damned well that we have what it takes to kick back." His voice fell back to normal, even lower, as he said, "It's me asking you, now. What'll you have?"

She looked at him. "What am I?" she asked, just as quietly as he. "A species of louse to be pinched out, or an adversary vanquished? An un-victorious warrior?"

"You're what you want to be."

Carolyn turned and went up the stairs to the control room where Morgan was standing behind the pilot with a strong hammerlock closed tight. Farradyne was close behind her.