never follow a falling star!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Intenvorld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn't take Catton long to realize that the hypno-jewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery.

Turn this book over for second complete novel

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Lloyd Catton

He knew what he wanted to find, but didn't know what it was.

Pouin Beryaal

Being on the Crime Commission, he knew too much-yet not quite enough.

Estil Seeman

She had to run away with a star-born alien to learn there was a difference between men.

Ambassador Seeman

He knew more about the affairs of state than about those of his own home.

Nuuri Gryain

He would double-cross—not for money, but for revenge.

Doveril Halligon

His way with women proved to be fatal.

The Plot Against Earth

by

CALVIN M. KNOX

ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.

the plot against earth

Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved

To Robert A. W. Lowndes

recruit for andromeda

Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace. Books, Inc.

Printed in U.S.A.

The mobning was bright, clear, and crisp. The sun, a blazing yellow-white ball, climbed toward its noonday height, casting long shadows in the streets of the city of Dyelleran. This was the hot season on the main continent of Morilar. Those beings whose business forced them out into the open moved rapidly toward their destinations. Only a few stopped to peer at the Earthman.

Lloyd Catton was his name. He was tall, tall as any of the elongated natives of Morilar, but unlike them he was solidly and powerfully built, with none of their spindly flimsiness. He was built to stand up to punishment—even the punishment of a noontime walk in 115-degree heat. One didn't go to an alien world expecting to find comfort and convenience.

Catton was dressed in the accepted style of a Terran diplomat: a light-weight sleeveless red doublet, gloves of green velvet trimmed with orange, a golden sash. His dark brown hair was cropped close to his skull. The gleaming blaster fastened to his sash was purely for ceremonial purposes: it neither could be fired nor was intended to be fixed. A local law prevented non-residents from carrying any sort of functional weapons, but Carton's official position required him to be at least decoratively armed.

An attache case dangled from his left hand. In it was his identification plaque, as well as the credentials naming him for the post of Special Investigator for the Terran World Government. Sweat beaded his broad back and shoulders,

5

pasting the doublet to his skin. This assignment, he knew, might keep him on Morilar for a long time. He was simply going to have to get used to the heat.

He crossed a broad well-paved street and looked up at the name-label riveted to a building wall. Translating from the wedge-shaped Morilaru characters, he read: Street of Government. He nodded, satisfied. This was the place he had intended to reach. And he had found his way across the city from the Terran Embassy by himself, without the need of asking a single person for directions, on his first morning here. That was the sort of performance his job was going to require as a constant norm.

He had arrived late the night before, on a special liner non-stop from Earth. By arrangement, he was quartered at the Terran Embassy. Last night he had met the Ambassador and his attractive young daughter, Estil; this morning, he was due to present his credentials to the Interworld Commission on Crime, of which he was now a member. Catton had been well prepared for this mission. He had been chosen with care from the entire corps of Terra's Special Agents.

Standing at the head of the broad street, he looked to the west and saw imposing sleek-walled buildings rising on both sides. His eyes took in the unfamiliar Morilaru numbers, and he searched until he had the one he wanted. There it was—Number Eleven, Street of Government. The towering building with the gray-and-yellow decorative pattern along its flanks. Catton walked toward the main entrance.

There was no door, only a golden curtain of force. The Earthman stepped through, and his nostrils registered a faint tang of ozone as he passed through the field. He knew he had just been scanned for dangerous weapons. He knew he would never have passed successfully through the field if he were carrying anything more deadly than the plugged blaster. The Morilaru were an innately suspicious race.

A guard paced back and forth in the pleasandy cool, antiseptically austere lobby of the official building. He stared curiously at Catton for a moment; it was not every day that Earthmen came in here. Catton paused, wondering if the guard would hail him. But the guard made no sign of interference. The Earthman walked past him and into the open liftshaft that waited for him, as if by special appointment, in the rear of the lobby.

Once he was inside, the walls of the liftshaft closed instantly around him. Catton eyed the indicator dial and twisted it to the Morilaru equivalent of Sixteen. Purring smoothly, the liftshaft rose. The gravitic column that was pushing it upward halted at.the building's sixteenth floor. Catton got out.

A frosted office door confronted him. The inscription, right-to-left after the manner of Morilaru writing, read:

INTERWORLD COMMISSION ON CRIME Please enter.

Catton put his hand to the doorplate and the frosted door flicked open. He stood at the threshold, his hand tightening convulsively on the sweaty handle of his attache case.

A Morilaru receptionist smiled coolly up at him from her desk. It was impossible to tell her age; she might have been twenty, or just as easily seventy. She wore the green crest of an unmarried woman twined in her hair. Her skin was a soft purplish hue; her eyes, light crimson, stood out brilliantly against that background. The clinging blouse she wore left her shoulders bare, revealing the three litde inch-high nubbins of bone on each shoulder that marked the chief external anatomical difference between Terran and Morilaru.

She said, using the local Morilaru dialect, "You have an appointment, sir?"

Catton nodded. "Pouin Beryaal is expecting me. My name is Lloyd Catton. From Earth." He spoke the language fluently; after a hundred hours of intensive hypnotraining in the three major Morilaru dialect variations, it was not surprising.

"Lloyd Catton," she repeated tonelessly, as if memorizing. "From Earth. To see Pouin Beryaal. Yes. Just one moment, Lloyd Catton. I will check."

Catton waited while she spoke briefly into an intercom grid. She used a somewhat different dialect, apparently not realizing that Catton would be aware of its implications. All she said was, "The Earthman is here to see you, Pouin Beryaal." But the inflected form of the dialect was an expression of contempt. Catton was not annoyed, merely interested. It was vital to him to know exactly how all of these outworlders, whether receptionists or potentates, regarded Earthmen.

He was unable to hear Pouin Beryaal's reply. A moment later an inner door opened and a' male Morilaru appeared —a hulking purple-skinned spider of a man, with enormous elongated arms and legs. "I am the secretary to Pouin Beryaal," the Morilaru said in his own language. "You will come this way."

Catton followed him inside. The atmospheric pressure dropped considerably in the inner office. Evidently they had conditioners on in here. Carton's ears were discomforted by the change, but at least it was a relief to emerge from the steam-bath for a while. The humid climate of Morilar was hellish.

His guide kicked a doorstop and a wooden slat door folded up with a loud clap, admitting them to a circular office whose walls were an iridescent blue-green that flickered irregularly down to the violet end of the spectrum and back again.

A Morilaru sat at the head of a wide table, and his posture and demeanor left no doubt that he was Pouin Beryaal, chairman of the Interworld Commission on Crime.

Seated to his right was an enormously fleshy orange-skinned being whom Catton recognized as a native of Arenadd, and to Beryaal's left was a gaunt, spectral gray creature from the Skorg system. All three outworlders were staring at Catton with undisguised curiosity.

The Morilaru said, "I am Pouin Beryaal. Do you speak Morilaru, Earthman?"

"The rules of interstellar contact," Catton said evenly, "require government personnel to be capable of speaking the language of the world to which they are assigned. I understand your language. My name is Lloyd Catton."

"Sit down, Lloyd Catton," Pouin Beryaal said, making no comment on Carton's acid reply. It was difficult to judge from the intonation, but it seemed to Catton that the Morilaru's tone in asking him to sit had been intentionally offensive.

The Earthman sat. He lifted his attache case, placed it on the table before him, and thumbed the release catch. There was a moment's halt while the scanner-band examined his thumbprint; then the case popped open. Catton drew forth a thin document bound in dark gray fabric.

"These are my credentials," he said, handing the document to Pouin Beryaal.

The Morilaru nodded and leafed through the booklet with no apparent change of expression. When he had reached the last page he nodded again, and casually handed the papers to the ponderous Arenaddin. The Arenaddin's eyes seemed to emerge from a welter of fat in order to scan the pages. The document was in all four of the major languages of the galaxy: Terran, Morilaru, Arenaddilak, and Skorg.

In a moment, the Arenaddin was finished. He passed Catton's document across the table to the Skorg, who leaned forward and perused it with awesome intensity for perhaps thirty seconds.

"Your papers are in order," Pouin Beryaal remarked. "Earth now has a delegate to this Commission. Your colleagues, beside myself, are Ennid Uruod of Arenadd, and Merikh eMerikh of Skorg. Do you find the atmosphere of this room offensive, Lloyd Catton?" "I have no complaints."

"A stoic," said the Skorg in hollow, cavernous tones. "He would have no complaints even if we turned off the scent-conditioners, no doubt."

"I don't happen to be as sensitive to discomfort as some Earthmen are," Catton said, restraining himself. The smell of a Skorg was almost intolerable to an Earthman, he knew. But he also knew that Skorgs were tremendously less tolerant of Earthman-odor than Terrans of Skorgs; five minutes after the purifiers in the room were turned off, the Skorg would be groveling in a retching heap on the floor, while Catton would merely feel severe distaste. "I would have no objections if the scent-conditioners are turned off," Catton said.

"That will not be necessary," said Pouin Beryaal dryly. "We do not intentionally wish your discomfort, Earthman. You are, after all, a member of this Commission—a colleague."

Catton nodded. He sensed the undercurrent of tension and hostility in the room. It was only to be expected. These three outworlders were representatives of races—Morilaru, Arenaddin, Skorg—that had known and vied with each other for centuries. Into the group had come a fourth race, galactic newcomers. Small wonder that the old, well established races would regard the fast-moving humanoids from Sol III with some suspicion. Not yet a century had passed since Earth's first contact with the other races of the galaxy. Hardly an instant, on the galactic timescale.

Pouin Beryaal said, "When we organized this Commission last year, we felt it was desirable to include an Earthman. Hence the invitation that resulted in your appointment and your presence here. Our problem is a problem that concerns every intelligent race in the galaxy."

"Hardly a new problem," rumbled the Arenaddin. "But one that has become more serious in recent years. It is time to take concerted action."

"Have you ever seen a hypnojewel, Earthman?" Pouin Beryaal asked.

Carton shook his head. "I've seen the documentary films on them, and I know what they can do. But I've never actually seen a hypnojewel itself."

The Morilaru's face creased in a faint smile. "You should understand the nature of your enemy, Earthman, before you begin to plot his destruction. Here. Look at this, closely and with concentration."

Pouin Beryaal drew a small glittering object from a green leather box on the table before him, and slid it down the burnished surface to Catton, who stopped it with his hand. He picked it up. It was a small cloudy gem, a good size for mounting in a ring. It was milk-white in color, and it had been cut with crude, irregular facets.

"This?" Catton said.

"Look at it," murmured the Skorg.

Uneasily, Catton concentrated on the surface of the stone. He had been warned, at the outset of this mission, to fear traps every step of the way. Perhaps it was better, he thought, not to look at the stone. These three outworlders might have prepared some unpleasant surprise for him. It was wisest to ^smile and decline the invitation, and hand the stone back. Yes, thought Catton. That was the wise thing to do. He would hand it back to Pouin Beryaal. He would—

He could not take his eyes from the stone.

It glowed, he saw now, with some inner light of its own. It was a warm radiant nimbus that swirled in patterns round the core of the gem, dancing and bobbing, weaving dizzyingly. Catton smiled. The tiny blaze of color was breath-takingly beautiful, an intertwining thicket of reds and greens and clashing blues. The stone appeared to have enlarged in size. It was tremendously relaxing to go on staring at it, watching the gay flame dance, while all tension ebbed away, all consciousness of self, all fears and torment vanished.

The edge of an alien hand chopped down numbingly on the upturned wrist of the Earthman. Catton cried out, and his fingers, suddenly robbed of strength, opened to let the stone fall. It went skittering across the glossy floor. Pouin Beryaal scooped it up with a quick motion and restored it to its box.

Catton sat transfixed, breathing deeply, while the vision of beauty faded. For almost half a minute, he could not speak.

"Half an hour more," said the Skorg, "and to take that stone away from you would have been to destroy your mind. As it is you probably feel withdrawal pangs now."

. "I feel as if my brain's been drawn out through my forehead and embedded in that stone," Catton murmured.

"The effects are immediate and impressive," said the Arenaddin. "There isn't a humanoid race in the galaxy that can withstand them."

"Devilish," Catton said quietly. He was shaken to the core. Up till this moment, he had not really been interested in whether the hypnojewel trade flourished or not; his real purpose lay elsewhere. But now, as he measured the intensity of his yearning for the stone now hidden in the leather box, he realized that this matter was graver than he had suspected. "Where do these things come from?" he asked.

"We don't know," Pouin Beryaal said. "They almost seem to enter the galaxy of their own accord."

"We have suspicions," the Skorg interjected. "There are races in the universe—non-humanoid races—which do not respond to the hypnotic effect of these jewels. One of those races might be manufacturing them and filtering them to the humanoid worlds. We do not know. But the trade in these jewels must be wiped out."

Carton nodded weakly. He was a strong man; yet a few seconds' exposure to the gem had left him limp. "Yes. Earth will do its best in fighting this trade," he said.

"The jewels are absolutely deadly," exclaimed the Arenad-din. "Men have been known to mail them to their enemies— who look at them and are immediately trapped. And there are others, voluntary addicts who escape this life by giving themselves up to the dreamworld the stones offer. Within an hour, the hold is unbreakable."

Catton said, "You did well to invite an Earthman to join this Commission. This is a matter that threatens the well-being of all worlds. It transcends what little differences of thinking there may be between Earth and the other humanoid cultures of the galaxy."

"Well spoken!" Pouin Beryaal said. It seemed to Catton that there was more than a trace of cynicism in Beryaal's tone. The hypnotic jewels were dangerous, of course. But the unvoiced enmity between Earth and the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg axis would not vanish overnight in response to this threat to universal well-being. Only a fool would think so, and neither Catton nor the people who had chosen him for this journey could lay claim to the title of fool.

"Have you any other—ah—demonstrations for me?" Catton asked.

"Just this," the Morilaru said. He drew a thick portfolio from a drawer in the table. "It is a file of our investigations and deliberations previous to your arrival. It may help you to read this, in order to bring yourself up to date. We will have it coded for your retinal patterns."

Catton was conducted to a laboratory elsewhere in the building, and there a technician took readings of his eyes with an elaborate measuring device. It was a familiar security measure among the Morilaru. From the retinal readings, a print of his retinal pattern—unique in the universe, as all were—was taken. The pattern was then embedded through a simple process on every page of the portfolio Beryaal had given him. As he turned each page, it would be necessary for Catton to stare at the sensitive patch for a few seconds, until the correspondence could be established. If he failed to perform the desensitization, or if any eyes but his scanned the page, the entire portfolio would char and burn beyond readability within half a minute.

When they had finished preparing the portfolio for him, there was no further reason for Catton to remain in the building. He could not function as a member of the Commission until he had familiarized himself with the situation and with their previous conclusions. So, locking the portfolio carefully into his attache case, Catton made polite but distant farewells to his three fellow Commissioners and stepped out once again into the blazing heat of Dyelleran, capital-city of the world Morilar.

It was early afternoon, now. The daily siesta-period was coming to its end. The temperature, Catton estimated, was still well over a hundred. He had been assured before he left Earth that there would be few days when the mercury dropped as low as ninety.

In a way, he realized, Pouin Beryaal had been discourteous in calling the meeting for noonday. The heat was at its worst then; it had been deliberately tacdess to force him to travel from his lodgings at that time. But Catton was prepared for rudeness on Morilar. Earthmen were not excessively popular here.

He hailed a cab. It was android-operated, according to the sign on the door. The android, of course, was of the Morilaru type, with dark bluish-purple skin and the vestigial bony spikes on its shoulders. Each race created androids in its own image.

"Take me to the Terran Embassy," Catton said.

The cab pulled away. It was cool inside; he loosened the throatband of his doublet. Traffic was heavy at this hour, and the trip across town, which had taken less than fifteen minutes in the morning, now lasted nearly three times as long. At length, though, the cab drew up outside the high gates of the Embassy. Catton pulled a couple of Morilaru coins from his pocket and dropped them into the pay-slot. The android automatically released the door-catch and Cat-ton stepped out.

Ten minutes later, he was in his room on the fifth floor of the Terran Embassy, climbing out of his sweat-soaked clothes and heading for the shower. After a quick freshening-up, he stretched out on the lounger and rang Service for something to eat.

He was tired. The Morilaru gravity was about 1.2 that of Earth, and the heat was never-ending. But no one had ever implied he was going on an easy mission.

There were rumors circulating in the galaxy that the three established humanoid races were planning some maneuver that would seriously damage the Terran economy. None of the talebearers could be very specific; no one had any concrete evidence. But the rumor persisted, and the Terran World Government was getting worried.

Coincident with the rumors about an alien plot against Earth had come the request from Morilar for a Terrestrial delegate to a Commission whose job it would be to investigate and control the illegal interstellar traffic in hypnojewels. Catton, specially trained for his job, had been chosen as the delegate—with the additional task of keeping his eyes open and trying to detect some substance behind the rumors of an anti-Terran conspiracy. What better way was there to camouflage a special investigator than as a special investigator—for something else? Catton would be only superficially interested in uncovering the sources of the hypnojewel trade; his real job was to find out what plans the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg worlds might have for bedeviling Earth.

For they were troubled worlds, despite all their outward signs of calm. It was only ninety years before—2214, by Earth reckoning—that Earthmen had broken out into interstellar space. And now a dozen Terran colony-worlds hung in the sky; Terran traders operated with skill and efficiency on the planets of the older cultures; Terra had won a place as a ranking galactic power. All in ninety years.

Not surprising, then, that Morilar—whose interstellar era was more than a thousand years old—feared Earth. Or that Skorg, which once had been dominant in half the galaxy before the rise of Arenadd, viewed the newcomers with alarm. Nor, for that matter, that the fleshy people of Arenadd, themselves relatively late arrivals in the galactic scheme of things, with only a few hundred years of star travel behind them, should be worried about the rise of a new galactic power.

Perhaps the three worlds schemed some way of throttling the Terran expansion. Which was why Catton had been sent to the outworlds. He was an observer; he was to watch, and see, and possibly to discover what steps the threatened worlds meant to take to maintain their galactic supremacy.

After Catton had refreshed himself and eaten, he turned his attention to the portfolio Pouin Beryaal had given him.

He lifted the metal hasp and stared at the solemn warning on the first page:

NOTICE!

This book is for use by authorized persons only. It is coded to prevent unauthorized persons from obtaining access to its contents. Turning this page without taking the proper precautions will result in instantaneous destruction of the entire volume.

Catton turned the page to look at the words that were meant for his eyes alone. In the margin at the upper left-hand comer of the page was a small pinkish oval patch, about the size of a man's thumb. As he had been instructed to do, Catton stared at the patch, counting off five seconds. Then he began to read. The code had been keyed in; for the next ten minutes, he could leave that page of the portfolio open without fear of its destruction. A longer look would require him to desensitize the protective patch a second time.

He read with care, pausing each time he turned the page to desensitize the marginal patch. It developed from the reports that the Commission had already uncovered considerable data. Included in the papers he had been given were details on the number of hypnojewels in the galaxy-more than a thousand were known to exist, and many of these had already been located and confiscated. But each year a dozen or more new gems entered the galaxy. The problem was not so much to track down and confiscate those jewels that already were in circulation, as to cut off the pipeline at its beginning.

There were speculations that the jewels originated in the fringes of the galaxy, on one of the worlds populated by non-humanoid beings. Eleven different non-humanoid races had been found to suffer no ill effects as a result of handling the jewels. But any humanoid who stared at one for more than a few seconds found himself drawn inextricably into the hypnotic web.

Carton finished leafing through the collection of transcripts. The situation seemed a genuine one: the aliens were troubled about the spread of this hypnojewel thing, and they had decided to enlist the aid of Earth by inviting an Earthman to join the Commission. There was no actual state of hostility between Earth and the other three galactic powers, of course; there was only a chill incordiality that had led a Terran historian to revive an old term, and dub the present galactic situation a Cold War.

Cold War it was. Terra and her few colonies versus the seventy worlds controlled by the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg axis. Diplomatic relationships still prevailed, and the worlds still engaged in friendly trade. But there was no telling when some crucial act of hostility might touch off an open war. And the advent of Earth onto the galactic scene had driven the other three worlds into their closest alliance in centuries.

Catton decided to test the effectiveness of the Morilar secrecy precautions. Leafing through the portfolio once a-gain, he selected one page—it contained some unimportant data on budgetary appropriations for the Commission—and ripped it loose from the binding. Carefully, Catton closed the portfolio, and placed the loose page on the table before him, deliberately neglecting to key in the sensitized patch.

He got results in less than thirty seconds. The sheet of paper began to turn brown along the tear; then, almost instantaneously, its entire surface was swept with a wash of blue flame, and within moments nothing but crumpled ash lay on the table. Catton nodded and cleared up the mess. He was going to have trouble carrying on his investigation if all secret Morilaru documents were as proof to spying as this one obviously had been.

Rising, he locked the portfolio away in the privacy-cabinet in his closet, and proceeded to dress, formally, in a stiff tunic of green with gold trim, a wide orange sash, and high polished boots. This evening there would be a reception at the Embassy in his honor.

When he was dressed, Catton locked his room and strolled down the wide, carpet-cushioned corridor of the Embassy's floor. It was a spacious and attractive building.

The sound of music was in the air—tinkling alien music, played on a strange instrument that produced a plangent tone not unlike that of a harpsichord. Following the music, Catton rounded the bend in the corridor and found himself at the entrance to a drawing-room which was occupied by several people. The music came to an abrupt halt at his arrival.

Catton saw that the people in the room were not all human. There were five: two Morilaru, lean and angular in their tight clothing, and three Terrans. Catton recognized two of the Terrans—Estil, the Ambassador's eighteen-year-old daughter, and her tutor, an elderly woman named Mrs. Larch. The remaining person was a Terran of dignified aspect who wore formal business clothes.

It had been Estil who had been playing, it seemed. She was seated at a wide keyboard connected to a complex stringed instrument of alien design.

"Pardon me," Catton said. "I didn't mean to intrude. I simply heard music, and—"

"Please be welcome here," Estil said. She spoke well, but formally; she had the accents of a child who had been raised with care, by a too-devoted governess. Catton had formed that impression the night before, during their brief meeting when he had arrived at the Embassy from the spaceport.

The girl rose from the keyboard and, graciously taking Catton's hand, led him all the way into the room. "This is Mr. Lloyd Catton, of Earth," she* announced. "He arrived on Morilar last night. He's—uh—a member of the new Inter-world Commission on Crime. Am I right, Mr. Catton?" "Precisely," he told her.

She made introductions. "This is Doveril Halligon," she said. "My music teacher. And his friend, Gonnimor Cleeren."

"How do you do," Catton said gravely to the two aliens. They bowed in return.

"I think you know Mrs. Larch," Estil said. "And this," she went on, pointing to the somber, middle-aged gentleman in business clothes, "is Mr. Bartlett, a friend of my father's from Earth."

Catton and Bartlett shook hands. Catton felt vaguely uncomfortable about the entire little scene. It was more convenient for him to stay at the Embassy than anywhere else on Morilar, but he was not easily at home in the milieu of drawing-room music recitals.

He said a trifle awkwardly, "The music sounded charming from a distance, Miss Seeman. I'd appreciate it if you'd continue playing."

Estil flushed prettily and returned to the keyboard. Her governess said, "The instrument is known as the gondran. Estil has been studying with Doveril Halligon for two years now. She has become quite proficient."

Catton stared at the alien music teacher for an instant. Doveril Halligon did not meet the glance. Instead he signaled to Estil, who began to play—falteringly, at first, but gaining in confidence after the first few measures. The piece seemed, to Catton's untutored ears, to be a difficult one; the keyboard technique was tricky, and the harmonies were strange. He joined politely in the applause when the last tinkling note had died away.

An Embassy android entered the drawing-room bearing a little tray of cool drinks, and a few minutes of sociability followed the end of Estil's recital. Catton, improvising desperately, managed to keep the conversation going as he discussed musical techniques with the two aliens, while Mrs. Larch and Estil exchanged sentences with Bartlett. Then the groupings broke up. Catton and Estil started across the room toward each other. Suddenly the girl stumbled and began to fall to her knees.

Catton moved forward rapidly, caught the girl, and steadied her on her feet before anyone else could move.

"Are you all right?"

"Perfectly," she said. "Thanks very kindly." In a lower voice she added, "I have to speak to you alone tonight. It's very important."

IH.

Thebe were more than a hundred guests at the reception in Carton's honor that evening. The list included virtually every Terran of note in Dyelleran. A quartet of Morilaru musicians kept up an endless flow of melody; the punchbowl, spiked with a tawny alien liquor, was never allowed to be empty. Catton did not care much for this sort of formal pomp, but he knew it was essential to his role that he allow himself to be presented to the world as a typical Terran diplomat.

As guest of honor, it was his privilege to claim the first dance with the Ambassador's daughter. The alien musicians played a fair approximation of a waltz, interpolating just enough of their own chromatic harmonies to destroy any link the waltz tune might have had with ancient Vienna. Estil moved lighdy in Catton's arms. She was a slim girl, gravely attractive, with serious violet-blue eyes and a soft cloud of dark hair.

"You said you wanted to talk to me alone tonight," Carton said softly as they swung round the floor.

"Yes. I'm in trouble, Mr. Catton. Maybe you can help me."

"Me? How can I help? I'm a stranger here?"

She nodded. "Perhaps that's how. Somehow I know I can trust you. I hope you don't mind listening to me go on like this."

"I'm always willing to help a damsel in distress. What's your difficulty, Miss Seeman?"

"I'll—111 tell you about it later. We'll go out on the balcony to talk. Daddy will think it's so romantic of usl"

Catton smiled, but within himself he felt uneasy. He hoped the girl was not leading up to something along the line of telling him she had fallen for him at first sight. For one thing, charming though she was, she was only a child, half his age; for another, his profession made romantic entanglements of any sort unwise. But he realized he was probably flattering himself. Estil would not be likely to develop much romantic interest for a craggy-faced man who was almost forty. He wondered what kind of trouble she was in.

The dance came to its end, and Catton escorted the girl across the floor to the table at which her father sat. Ambassador Seeman was a great barrel of a man, immensely tall, hugely broad; his voice was a mellow bass boom. As the Terran World Government's Ambassador to Morilar, it was his task to keep diplomatic relations between the two worlds on an even keel despite the constant stresses that arose.

"Your daughter dances very well," Catton said.

Seeman chuckled. "She's had good tutors. I've spared no expense."

A man wearing the uniform of an officer in the Terran

Space Navy approached, said something to Estil, and danced away with her. As soon as the girl was beyond earshot, the Ambassador remarked, "She's come along wonderfully well since her mother died. Become the very image of my wife."

"How long ago did she die?"

"Twelve years. Almost as soon as we arrived on Morilar. Estil was six, then. She hardly remembers Earth at all now, except as a vague blur."

"You haven't been back in all this time?"

"No," Seeman said. "She's never shown any interest in returning to Earth. Morilar is her home world, I'm afraid. After all, she's spent two-thirds of her life here."

Catton nodded. A woman came up to them; Catton had been introduced to her earlier in the evening, and he dimly recalled that she was the wife of one of the lesser Terran diplomats stationed on Morilar. They made conversation for a while, and then Carton completed the formalities by dancing with her. She chattered on and on about the complexities of life on an alien world—houseboy trouble, the heat, the strange food, all the rest.

The evening dragged along. Some time later, Catton found himself dancing with Estil again; and, at the end of the dance, they strolled out onto the open balcony at the far side of the ballroom. Catton noted with irritation that they were being stared at, and no doubt commented upon, as they left the dance floor.

The night was warm. The sky, speckled with the unfamiliar constellations, was partly veiled with murky clouds. The two bright moons of Morilar hung high overhead. Below them, the city sprawled out toward the horizon.

Estil said, "Will you promise to keep absolutely secret everything I'm going to tell you?"

"That's a pretty tall order. Suppose you tell me that the sun's going nova. Should I keep the news to myself?"

Catton regretted his facetiousness instandy. She said, "I mean it. Please be serious."

"All right. I'm sorry. What do you want to tell me, EstilP" "I'm in love," she said simply.

Catton peered out over the balcony. A river wound like a glittering snake through the heart of the city. "Every girl your age should be in love," he said. "It's good for the spirit."

"You're patronizing me," she said crisply. Catton smiled. "I guess I am. Again, I'm sorry. I mean it. I won't do it again." "Will you hear me out?" "Go on," he said.

"Very well. I'm in love with my music teacher. Doveril Halligon. You met him this afternoon in the drawing-room."

Her quiet words detonated like bombshells. Catton turned pale. He swung round to face her. "But—but he's a Morilarul An alien!"

"He's a person," she replied. "A kind, warmhearted person. As good as any Earthman I've ever known. Why shouldn't I love him? He understands me. He loves me."

Catton moistened his lips. The implications of this thing were explosive. An ambassador's daughter, in love with an alien? The scandal would be enormous. "All right," he said calmly. "You're in love with him. Why tell this to me?"

"I want to go away from here with Doveril. Far away, where no one can find us and break us up. I know, it's a shocking thing, an Earth girl falling in love with—with an alien. I can't help myself. It—just happened that way. I have a little money saved. So does Doveril."

"And how do I fit into this?" Catton asked.

"You're here to investigate the hypnojewel racket, aren't you?"

Catton's jaw dropped. "Yes. How did you find that out?" The girl smiled. "Daddy told me. Daddy tells me almost everything I want him to tell me." She paused. "You're here to investigate trade in hypnojewels. Well, sometimes, I've heard Doveril talking about hypnojewels with his friends. Whispering. This afternoon, when he was here at the Embassy, giving me my music lesson, he brought that friend of his along, Gonnimor Cleeren. They said a few things. I guess they didn't think I understood. I heard them mention hypnojewels."

"Are you sure? But—"

"I'm afraid," the girl said, trying to keep an adolescent quiver out of her voice. "Doveril doesn't like to talk much about his past. I'm afraid he may be mixed up in the hypno-jewel business, or that he might have been involved in it some time in the past. So what I want you to do for me—if you can—is find out whether he's in the clear. Can you do that for me?"

"Tell you whether or not Doveril has ever been mixed up in hypnojewel trafficking?"

"Yes. Oh, you must have access to the police records, as a member of the Crime Commission, and—"

"And those records are supposed to be confidential."

"I know," she said. "But 1 love Doveril so much—and you wouldn't want me to run away with him if he were a criminal, would you?"

I wouldn't want you to run away with him for any reason, Catton thought. It would be suicidally foolish for her to elope with a penniless alien musician. But he kept his thoughts to himself.

He said, "I see your position. You must be terribly worried about him." I am.

"I hope for your sake that he's in the clear." "I hope so too," she said. "You'll help me, then?" "I can't promise anythng. I'll do my best, though. Ml try to find out."

"You'll do it soon, won't you?"

"As soon as I can find anything, 111 let you know." He smiled. "We'd better go back inside now," he said. "We've been out here almost fifteen minutes. People are going to start whispering things about us."

They returned to the ballroom. The dance was still in full swing. Carton grinned at the girl and she went dancing off in the arms of one of the young Space Navy officers. Catton wandered toward the sidelines and poured himself a glass of the highly spiked punch.

Ambassador Seeman was deep in conversation with two Terran businessmen and their wives. Catton wondered whether the Ambassador had even the faintest notion of the sort of thing his little girl had become involved in, at her tender age. Probably, Catton thought, Seeman had no suspicion whatever. He shrugged.

About midnight, the reception ended. The guests departed, and Catton, wearily, returned to his own room two floors above the Embassy ballroom. He flickered on the lightswitch. The visiphone blinker was on, telling him that there had been a call for him during the evening.

He activated the playback of the call-recorder, and the screen came to light.

The head and shoulders of a Morilaru woman appeared in the viewing area. Above her head, the time of her call was imprinted. She had called nearly two hours ago.

She said, "You don't know me, but I have some information that can be very useful to you. If you think you're interested, call me any time before midnight at K22-1055B."

Frowning, Catton looked at his watch. It was after midnight, but not much after. He decided to try the number.

Blanking the screen and wiping away the recording of her call, he punched out the number on the keyboard. A moment passed, while the screen remained cloudy. Then the murk cleared. The head and shoulders of the Morilaru woman appeared. She seemed to be young, as far as Catton could tell, but there was a cold hardness about her eyes and lips.

"Yes?" she said.

"This is Lloyd Catton. You left a message for me to call you.

"Oh. Yes. I'd like to meet you, Catton." "Why?"

"It isn't something I could be happy talking about on a vision screen," she said.

"If you don't feel like telling me what you want to talk about," Catton said, "I might as well switch the screen off. It's too late at night for playing mysterious guessing-games."

"All right. Ill tell you this much: I have some information for you on a subject you're very interested in. A subject connected with jewelry."

Catton nodded slowly, concealing his confusion and surprise. Word certainly traveled quickly on this planet. He said, "Okay, I'm interested. I suppose you want to meet me?"

"Yes. Tomorrow."

"Where?"

"In the old quarter," she said. "There's a tavern where I could see you. It's on the Street of the Two Moons, just over the bridge. Think you can find it?"

"I'll manage. What's the name of the place?"

"The Five Planets," she said. "My name is Nuuri Gryain. Will you be there at noon sharp?"

"Ill be there," Catton said. The Morilaru woman grinned at him slyly and blanked the screen. Catton stared in puzzlement at the dying pattern of light for a moment, then shrugged and clicked the switch. The Five Planets, tomorrow at noon. It was a date.

Dyellehan, capital city of Morilar, shared one characteristic with many other capital cities througout the galaxy: the contrast between the district of official buildings and the slums was extreme. Dyelleran was divided by the River Mhorn, which pursued an east-to-west course through the city on its tortuous path to the sea. The river was bridged twenty times within the city proper, but there was no real bond between the two halves of Dyelleran. The contrast between the east bank, on which the government buildings and the best residential areas were situated, and the west bank, or Old Quarter, was extraordinary.

It was mid-morning when Catton crossed the bridge into the Old Quarter. The moment he stepped from his cab he knew this was a considerably different neighborhood from the serene and architecturally impressive governmental half of the city. The streets were crooked and paved with cobblestones; a nasty stink of rotting vegetables hung in the air, and sleeping Morilaru huddled in the doorways. The heat, which had been annoying on the other side of the river, was impossible here. Droning mosquito-like insects hovered in greedy clouds.

The Street of the Two Moons turned out to be one of the widest in the entire district: that is, vehicles could pass comfortably in both directions. The old houses that lined the street tilted crazily in all angles and directions. Some of them, Catton guessed, were more than a thousand years old, and still used as dwellings.

He had checked the city directory and discovered that

the number of The Five Planets was 63, Street of the Two Moons, but the information did Catton little good; no house numbers were apparent on any of the buildings. But he had no difficulty finding the tavern. A huge grimy banner dangled out over the street, moving fitfully in the faint breeze, and emblazoned on the tattered cloth Catton saw five brightly-colored worlds arranged in a loose circle. He quickened his pace.

The tavern door was no fancy electronic affair; it was a simple slab of solid wood. Catton dragged it open and stepped inside.

The place was dark, according to the universal custom of taverns. Along the left wall was the bar, manned by a dour-looking bald old Morilaru; tables were scattered at irregular intervals throughout the dimly-lit, low-roofed room. Only four people, all Morilaru, were in the tavern as Catton entered. All four turned to stare at him.

The girl was sitting at the table closest to the door. A mug of wine was in her hand, and another was on the table, evidently having been poured for him. He walked over and looked down, trying to be certain she was the one he had spoken to the night before. It was often not easy to tell one Morilaru from another.

"Nuuri Gryain?" he asked.

She smiled at him, showing flashing white teeth. "Sit down, Catton. I've already ordered a drink for you. I hope you like our wine."

He pulled out the seat, lowered himself into it, and cradled the wine mug in his big hands. The mug was of yellow clay, and refreshingly cool to the touch in the hothouse atmosphere. He looked closely at her.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Somebody with a grudge. That's all."

"What kind of grudge?"

"A grudge against a certain man," she said. "That doesn't concern you. Let's say I'm interested in seeing justice get done. My own kind of justice."

Calmly, Catton lifted the wine to his lips. The liquid was cool, faintly bitter. He allowed about half a spoonful to enter his mouth, and he held it there, without swallowing it, as he tasted it.

"Go on," she said. "It's safe to swallow. The wine isn't drugged or poisoned, Catton."

He swallowed the half spoonful. "Why should I trust you? The wine was on the table when I came in. You might easily have doctored it."

"Do you want me to drink the rest of your wine?" she asked. "Or wouldn't you trust that either?"

'There are drugs that effect a Terran metabolism but not a Morilaru one," he said, grinning. "But 111 take my chances. The first mouthful didn't kill me." He took a deeper sip: the wine was good. He set the mug down half empty. "Suppose you start telling me why you wanted to see me."

She locked her fingers together. Like most of her race, she was long and thin—spidery, that was the way most Morilaru looked to Catton. But there was a strange grace about her. Her red-hued eyes sparkled oddly, and her gaunt cheekbones had a way of highlighting the subtle colors of her skin. She wore the green crest of maidenhood in her lustrous black hair.

She said, "You're here to investigate the traffic in hypnojewels, Earthman." It was not a question but a flat declarative statement."

"How do you know that?" Catton asked.

Her spike-tipped shoulders lifted lightly in a shrug. "I've had access to the information. Let's leave it at that, shall we?"

"For the moment. All right: I'm investigating hypno-jewel traffic. What do you want to tell me?"

"I can help you uncover a ring of hypnojewel smugglers,

Catton. I'm volunteering my services as a go-between. Think you're interested?"

He tapped the table. "You've got a price. What is it?"

"No price. I just want to see this bunch put in jail, that's all."

"Simple as that, eh?"

"Yes. As simple as that."

"All right," Catton said. "I'll go along with you, maybe. How do you plan to work this uncovering?"

"Ill take you to the place where you can make contact with these people," she said. "We can fob you off as a would-be purchaser of a hypnojewel. I think we can do it convincingly. The transaction can take place, and then you can crack down, once you have the incriminating evidence. Does it sound okay?"

For a moment Catton made no answer. Then he said in a soft voice, "You're selling out some friends of yours, aren't you, Nuuri? Why?"

"What does that matter to you? You Earthmen are only interested in results. In smashing the illegal smuggling trade. Isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I'm offering you a chance to uncover something big—and you're asking questions."

"I just want to know what you stand to gain personally out of this," Catton said.

The girl took a deep draught of her wine. "Ill spell it out for you simply. I was in love with one of the members of this group. He is not in love with me. He claims to be in love with another woman, and he also says now that he's going to run away with her as soon as the proceeds from the next hypnojewel deal come in. I'm just angry enough at him to want to turn the whole bunch in to the law. Now do you get it, Earthman? Now do you see the picture?"

"Jealousy. Pure green jealousy."

"Call it whatever you want. But Doveril thought he could grind me into the dirt, and I want him to find out he isn't going to get away with it."

Catton felt a pang of painful surprise. "Doveril?"

"Maybe I shouldn't have let that slip. But that's his name, as long as I've dropped it out. He's the head of the group. He earns his keep as a music-teacher, right now. Maybe you've seen him around the Embassy. He teaches music to the Ambassador's brat."

Catton nodded, shutting his eyes for an instant. He was not ordinarily susceptible to emotional distress, but he felt deeply saddened now. Poor Estil was going to be in for the nastiest jolt of her young life.

"Tell me," Catton said. "This woman who's taken your place in his affections—you know who she is?"

"No. And it's a good thing, too. I'd scratch her eyes out!" There was snapping fire in Nuuri's voice. Catton thought he understood the alien girl completely, at that moment: sensual, highly emotional, eager for revenge. He felt relieved that she did not know the actual identity of her hated rival.

"I'm not sure I care for your motives in this business," Catton said. "But the end result is what matters, and I'm anxious to see the hypnojewel trade rooted out. When will you take me to these people?"

"Whenever you want. Tomorrow's a good day."

"Good enough," he said. "Tomorrow, then. Suppose I meet you here, at this time."

"Right. How about another drink, Earthman?"

Catton shook his head. "One's enough, thanks." He rose and dropped a coin on the table. "This ought to take care of the drink I had. Ill see you tomorrow, right here. Don't change your mind overnight."

"I won't," she said vehemently. "Don't worry about that."

Catton stepped from the dimness of the tavern to the bright searing heat of the street in early afternoon. There was no cab in sight; he walked down to the foot of the Street of the Two Moons, breathing shallowly to keep from retching at the filth all about him.

He would have to tell Estil, of course. He wondered how she would take it. Badly, no doubt. She was in for an emotional wrench. But at least she had already had misgivings about Doveril, so it wouldn't be a total shock to her to learn of his criminal activities. And, in any event, finding out now would save her from making a mistake of life-shattering consequences. In a few months she would probably forget all about the impecunious, fast-talking music teacher.

Catton walked eastward toward the newer section of the city. He crossed the bridge on foot, stopping once to peer down at the sluggish, dirty water, coated with bright oil slicks, and at the men working on the barges that passed beneath the bridge. They worked stripped to the waist, tall fleshless purple beings who looked almost but not quite human, and they didn't seem to object to the killing heat. Probably, he thought, Morilaru who visit Earth are astonished at our ability to function in such a dread chill. It was all a matter of viewpoint.

There was a public communicator-booth at the eastern end of the bridge. It was time, Catton decided, to report to Pouin Beryaal.

He entered the booth and clicked the door shut behind him. Fishing an octagonal ten-unit coin from his change-purse, Catton placed it in the appropriate slot and punched the number of the Interworld Commission on Crime.

There was a moment's pause; then, on the tiny screen of the communicator, the blurred image of a Morilaru female appeared.

"Office of the Interworld Commission on Crime. Your party, please?"

"This is Lloyd Carton. I'd like to talk to Pouin Beryaal, if he's in."

"Just one moment, please."

Catton waited, reflecting on the universal similarity of receptionists and switchboard operators all over the galaxy. A few seconds later, the angular, austere face of the chairman of the Commission appeared.

"Catton?"

"Good afternoon, Pouin Beryaal. I'm calling from a public communicator just over the bridge from the Old Quarter."

"Are you out slumming today?" Beryaal asked sardonically.

"I've been conducting a little investigation."

"So soon? And without consulting us?"

"Someone phoned me last night and said she had some information that would interest me. We made a date today in a tavern over on the other side of the river. Seems she's had a love-spat with her boyfriend, who's a hypnojewel smuggler, and to get even with him she wants to expose the whole ring. I'm seeing her again tomorrow."

Pouin Beryaal chuckled. "You Earthmen certainly waste little time in beginning an investigation."

"I'm still not fully convinced she's going to go through with it. She says she means it, but maybe she'll lass and make up with him tonight. Ill keep you posted on further developments."

"Very kind of you," Beryall said. "I'll tell our colleagues of your progress. We hope to see you again in our office soon—there is a room provided for your use now. Is there anything further you wish to report?"

"Not just now," Catton said. He broke contact and left the booth.

Catching a cab as it came thrumming across the bridge, he returned to the Embassy. There, he was surprised to find a cluster of the green vehicles of the local police parked outside the building. Morilaru police were everywhere, milling over the Embassy grounds like a swarm of buzzing insects.

Puzzled, Catron entered the Embassy gates. A policeman stopped him and said rougly: "Where are you going, Earth-man?"

"I'm residing at the Embassy. What's going on here?"

"We will ask the questions. Proceed within."

Catton obediendy entered the building. Half a dozen members of the Embassy staff were clustered in an anxious little knot in the lobby. Catton approached them.

"Will someone please tell me what all the fuss is about?" he demanded.

It was the Ambassador's cook who answered. "It's Miss Estil—Ambassador Seeman's daughter."

Catton caught his breath sharply. Was he too late? Had the litde fool decided to run off with her Morilaru lover anyway, without waiting for information about him?

"What about Miss Estil?" he asked.

"She's vanished," was the twittering reply. "Her bed wasn't slept in all night. She left her note with her father, saying she was running away—running away with the man she loved."

v.

The hubbub at the Embassy lasted well into the night. Catton stayed out of the foreground. He was interrogated briefly by Barnevelt, the head of the Embassy security staff, who looked flustered and chagrined, and then he was interviewed all over again by a Morilaru crime-prevention officer who seemed not too terribly interested in the disappearance at all.

Carton told the same story word-for-word to both of them. He had been on Morilar only a couple of days, had met the Ambassador's daughter twice, had had a brief conversation with her at the ball the night before. She had talked obliquely of being in love, but Catton could provide no details. After all, he had hardly known the girl.

The interrogation over, Catton made his way up to his room and settled down. He was puzzled and not happy over the girl's disappearance. Doveril was a criminal, as Estil had suspected—but yet she had run away with him the very day after she had asked Catton to check on Dov-eril's record. Perhaps she had had a sudden change of heart, and decided to elope before Catton could provide her with the information she did not want to have; or else there had been some coercion involved in her abrupt disappearance. Catton hoped not. But for the sake of his own investigations he decided to keep quiet about those aspects of die case he had data on.

The next day he kept his appointment with Nuuri Gryain, meeting her once again at The Five Planets shortly after noon. It was a swelteringly hot day. Catton was growing accustomed to the oven heat of Dyelleran.

The Morilaru woman was waiting for him at the table nearest the door. She was bent over a local news-sheet, puzzling out the wedge-shaped characters. As he came in she looked up, smiling coldly.

"Morning greetings, Catton."

"Hello, Nuuri. What's in the paper?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. My reading isn't so good, Earthman." She chuckled. "I find this item interesting. Can you read our language?"

"Well enough to decipher a newspaper," Catton said. She shoved the sheet over to him and tapped a front-page story meaningfully. Catton frowned. The headline said, clearly enough, DAUGHTER OF TERRAN AMBASSADOR VAN-

1SHES. It was an article about Estil Seeman. He read slowly though it. About all it said was that the Earthgirl had disappeared yesterday, leaving a note for her father—contents unspecified—and that a galaxy-wide search was being instituted for her.

"It seems Doveril has lost a pupil," Nuuri commented when Catton looked up.

The Earthman frowned. "It would seem that way. Think shell be found?"

"Who knows? The galaxy is a big place; a young girl can lose herself easily enough. I doubt they'll ever find her."

"Enough talk of the girl," Catton said. "You know why I'm here today."

"Of course. I'll take you where you can buy what you're looking for. But first a disguise is in order. Come—let's leave."

Catton followed her out into the street, which was all but empty because of the mid-day heat. She strode purposefully along at a rapid pace, turning comers twice, and stopped finally in front of a shabby shop with darkened windows.

She threw open the door.

"In here," she muttered to Catton.

The Earthman stepped inside. An old Morilaru, so old his skin had faded from its one-time purple to a musty grayish-blue, sprawled dozing behind a counter. Nuuri slapped the flat of her hand down on the wood inches from his face. The Morilaru awoke with a start.

"Nuuri! What-"

"A job for you, you old fool." She indicated Catton. "Turn him into a Dargonid, and do a good job of it for your money." "Right now?"

"This very moment," Nuuri snapped.

The ancient Morilaru elbowed himself wearily upward, beckoned to Catton, and shambled off into a back room partitioned from the front of the shop by a frayed and dilapidated curtain of glass beads. Nuuri followed, standing in the doorway with her arms knotted together across her chest, hands gripping shoulder-spikes in a typical Morilaru posture of relaxation.

Carton blinked uneasily. "Just how permanent is this transformation going to be?"

"It will take fifteen minutes to make the change, half that time to restore you," the old man said. "It is a simple enough process. Remove your clothes."

Carton eyed Nuuri questioningly, but she made no motion to leave. He shrugged and stripped off his clothing, tossing it carelessly in a comer. The Morilaru selected a spraysqueeze vial from a rack and advanced on Catton.

"Shut your eyes."

Catton did so. A moment later he smelled an acrid chemical odor and felt a faint coolness playing about his body. The application took several minutes. When it was complete, Catton opened his eyes again and saw that his body was now colored iron-gray from head to foot.

The rest of the disguise followed in short order. Catton was fitted for contact lenses that provided him with yellow pupils on a black background; another spray turned his hair from brown to blue; lovingly-applied strips of collodion accented his cheekbones, tripled the length of his earlobes, and gave a downward slant to his eyebrows. The final touch was the clothing; the Morilaru stored Carton's Earthman clothes in a locker and gave him the brief tunic of a Dargonid.

Nuuri came forward, jabbed a finger against the flesh of Carton's shoulder, and scrubbed it up and down to test the permanence of the color-spray. It held fast. She nodded in critical approval.

"A fine job. Catton, you look like a native-born of Dargon!"

"Will it convince your friends?"

"I'm sure of it." She nodded at the old man. "Pay him, Catton."

"How much?"

"Five thrones?" the old man suggested hopefully.

Nuuri snorted. "Give him a hundred units now, and a hundred more when we return—for the safekeeping of your clothes. Two thrones is more than enough."

Disappointment was evident on the venerable Morilaru's seamed face. But Carton did not care to cross Nuuri. He took two fifty-unit pieces from his money belt and gave them to the Morilaru.

"Here's a throne for you," Carton said. "Another for you later in the day."

"My gratitude, good sir."

"Come on," Nuuri said. "Let's get out of here."

They left through a back exit and walked briskly through the crooked, vile-smelling streets. Carton was steaming beneath his layer of coloring, but he forced himself to keep pace with the girl.

"What's my name?" he asked. "And why am I here?"

Nuuri thought for a moment. "You're—ah—Zord Karlsrunig. I once knew a Dargonid of that name. You're a merchant here on business, leaving for Dargon at the end of the week. Don't worry about the other details. Hide behind your passion for anonymity. The purchaser has certain rights of silence too, you know."

"Zord Karlsrunig," Catton repeated. "All right. And the story is that I'm in the market for a hypnojewel, and am willing to pay cash down for it."

"Yes. We'll make all the necessary negotiations. Then you'll tell them you have to return to the bank to get the cash. Instead, of course, you notify the authorities."

Some minutes later, they paused in front of another saloon, this one emblazoned with the name, The Deeper Draught. It was smaller and, if anything, dingier-looking than the other bar, The Five Planets, where Catton had first met Nuuri.

"Wait here and don't get into trouble," Nuuri whispered. "I'll be back in a moment."

Carton nodded. The alien woman went inside. He waited at the door, trying to rehearse his lines, struggling to don the character of a Dargonid. He would have to introduce a slight guttural quality into his speech, and perhaps adopt some clumsy locutions of construction. He would have to remember never to display a characteristically Terran posture—crossing his legs was out, and steepling his fingertips. Dargonids—how the devil did Dargonids hold themselves, he wondered?—Dargonids customarily sat with one hand on their kneecap, the other gripping the first arm's elbow. It would be awkward for him, but he knew he had better perform the gesture as if he had been doing it all his life.

Nuuri returned a few moments later. She looked angry. "They're all there—except Doverill Except the one I was most anxious to have apprehended!"

That was no surprise, Catton thought, in view of the fact that the Morilaru music teacher was by now many light-years away, bound outward for—where—with his beloved. But he did not want Nuuri to know that.

"Take me inside anyway," he said. "We'll round up this batch whether Doveril's here or not."

"But I don't care if the others are arrested. I'm. only interested in arranging Doveril's downfall."

Catton scowled. "I'll see to it that Doveril is implicated somehow." His hand darted out, seized her wrist. "You've taken me this far. Don't back out now. Well catch these, and one of them will confess Doveril's complicity."

Sighing, she said, "Very well. Come inside with me."

They passed through a poorly lit, foul-smelling saloon whose only customers were two bedraggled Morilaru drabs, and he followed her up a creaking stairway to the upper floor of the tavern, where, inn-fashion, there were a few rooms available for lodging.

Nuuri paused in front of the furthermost of the rooms and knocked twice, then twice more. The door opened. A Morilaru head popped warily out, looked around, stared curiously at Catton.

"You may enter."

Catton followed Nuuri into the room. There were five male Morilaru there, of indeterminate ages. The Earthman realized with a sudden jolt of shock that one of the aliens was Gonnimor Cleeren, the friend of Doveril's who had been present at the music-lesson the afternoon of the Ambassadors ball. Cleeren was staring at Catton keenly, but gave no outward indication that he had penetrated the Earthman's disguise.

One of the other Morilaru said, "You speak our language, Dargonid?"

"Well enough," Catton answered, putting the accent on the wrong syllable in each of the two Morilaru words. "I understand you, and my money speaks even more well for me, Morilaru."

"The woman tells us you wish to buy."

Catton tipped his head to one side, a Dargonid affirmative gesture. Thank God, he thought, that he had once carried out an assignment on Dargon. It had been years ago, but he still remembered many behavior patterns of that predominantly mercantile world.

"I wish to buy, yes. And you, to sell. But can you give immediate delivery? I return to Dargon shortly."

"If you can pay, we can deliver."

"My account is large at the great bank," Catton said. "Though I will not be cheated on the price."

"The price," said another of the Morilaru, "is ten thousand thrones."

Catton inserted a finger in his mouth to show annoyance. After a brief silence he said, "It is much for a piece of polished stone. I will give you six thousand."

"Ten thousand," repeated the Morilaru, "and not a unit less."

Carton shook his head. "Six thousand is too high. But I will extend my price another few thousand units. I offer you six thousand five hundred thrones."

"Ten thousand," said the Morilaru inflexibly.

The Earthman was pensive. As a thrifty Dargonid, he was expected to haggle; as an investigator, he was interested only in making the incriminating purchase. But if he gave in too easily, they might suspect him.

He said, "You are stubborn men. Well, I stubborn can be with equality. Break your price or P go elsewhere. If need be I will go to the wholesale source for the stones."

Several of the Morilaru laughed at that. One said, "You 11 need a strong nose, Dargonid!" Another scowled at the one who had spoken. Catton narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. That was a useful bit of information. The strong odor of Skorg was proverbial in the galaxy; were they implying that the hypnojewels came from there? Catton filed the information away.

He rose. "Business I will do, extortion no. I raise my offer to seven thousand two hundred thrones. Will you be inflexible?"

"The price is ten thousand."

Catton flicked his tongue back and forth in the Dargonid equivalent of a shrug. "I argue not. Your price is too high. Thank you for your courtesies," he said to Nuuri. "And to the rest of you, good day."

He edged toward the door, taking his time, wondering if his bluff would be called.

As his hand touched the doorknob a voice behind him said, "Wait."

Catton turned. "Why?"

"Nine thousand five hundred thrones."

"Eight thousand."

"You Dargonids would bargain for hours of your life!" the Morilaru spokesman exclaimed. "Nine thousand is our lowest price. You've peeled a thousand thrones off—be content with that."

Catton was silent a long moment. At length he said, "We are hardly more than ten percent apart. I offer you eight thousand five hundred as a meeting-ground."

The Morilaru eyed each other, debating silently. They nodded. "Done," the spokesman said. "When will you have the cash?"

"Ill leave you five hundred thrones as a binder. The rest will I obtain at my bank within the hour. When will I receive the stone?"

"Upon payment. Would you inspect it now?"

"I would indeed."

One of the Morilaru knelt, peeled up a loose floorboard, drew forth a small velvet pouch. He tossed it to Catton, who fumbled the catch deliberately, then snatched the falling pouch with his other hand in a desperate grab. The Dargonids had the reputation of clumsiness.

He snatched a glance at the Morilaru. They seemed to be holding their breaths.

"Be wary, Dargonid," the spokesman advised him. "You know the peril of the stone."

"That I do," Catton replied. He undid the catch at the mouth of the pouch and let the stone drop out onto the palm of his hand. He looked at it only long enough to verify its identity, then returned it to the pouch and tossed it back to the Morilaru.

"I am satisfied. Herewith the binder; I'll return with the rest within the hour. Remain you here."

Catton counted out ten golden fifty-throne pieces from his moneybelt and handed them across to the Morilaru. Then, bowing courteously, he withdrew from the room, leaving Nuuri there with the hypnojewel smugglers.

He made his way rapidly through the tangle of streets to the nearest bridge into the eastern half of the city. After making sure no one had followed him, he stepped into the first public communicator-booth he found, and dialed the number of Pouin Beryaal.

After the usual routine delays, Beryaal appeared on the tiny screen.

"Close your circuit," Catton ordered. "This is important material."

"The circuit is sealed. Speak away."

"I've encountered a ring of hypnojewel peddlers. They've agreed to sell me a stone for eighty-five hundred thrones. I left five hundred as a binder and I'm supposedly on my way to the bank to get the rest."

Beryaal's eyes widened. "Have you seen the stone?"

"Yes. It's the real item."

"I suppose this accounts for the alteration in your face," Beryaal commented. The screen, black-and-white, did not indicate Catton's color change. "Very well. Where can they be found?"

"A tavern called The Deeper Draught, across the river on the Street of Cutpurses. Upstairs, in the furthermost room from the stairs."

"I'll have men there in twenty minutes," Beryaal promised.

VI.

The arrest went off smoothly enough. Catton and Pouin Beryaal had agreed on the details before breaking the communicator contact. Catton was to be allowed to escape; Nuuri would be arrested and later freed.

The Earthman went on to the Grand Bank of Morilar and drew out eight thousand thrones from the special account placed there for his use. The clerk frowned in confusion at the inexplicable sight of a Dargonid drawing money from a Terran account, but the identification-placket matched, and the teller had no choice but to hand Catton eight crisp thousand-throne bills.

Catton took a cab across the bridge, left it at the Street of Two Moons, and covered the rest of the way to The Deeper Draught on foot. He was rapidly learning his way around the knotty maze of streets in Dyelleran's Old Quarter. His mnemonic training stood him, as always, in good stead in this city.

He had timed his excursion precisely. Unless Beryaal's crime-detection men missed their cue, he would have three or four minutes and no more before the arrest. He mounted the tavern stairs two at a time and knocked m the prescribed manner on the door.

"It is I, Karlsrunig, the Dargonid. Let me in!"

The door swung back. Catton nodded in satisfaction. All of the Morilaru were still there, a tense, narrow-eyed- group. Nuuri looked particularly nervous. Catton said, "I have the cash. Take the stone from its hiding-place."

"Show us the money."

Catton riffled the eight bills in front of them. The stone was produced. Catton said slowly, "Seven thousand five hundred thrones?"

"The deal was closed at eighty-five hundred," the Morilaru reminded him. "Would you bargain now?"

Catton smiled. "Force of habit solely, friends. Let me have the stone."

"At the agreed sum?"

"Here is my money. Eight thousand, plus the five hundred you have already. The stone!"

Catton extended the eight bills, and at the same time reached out a hand for the pouch. The timing of the crime-detection men was extraordinary. Catton and the Morilaru were frozen for a moment in a little tableau, each with one hand on the money and one on the pouch, when the door exploded inward. A bright purple flash of light told Catton that the transaction was preserved on film, as indisputable evidence. A moment later, after an abortive exchange of shots, the arrest was concluded. One Morilaru lay dead_K his body gone above the chest. The others, as well as Nuuri and Catton, held hands high in the air.

"Ill have that pouch," said the crime-detection group's leader. He snatched it, opened it wide enough to ascertain that it held a hypnojewel, and pocketed it. "All right, come along, all of you."

As they reached the street Catton felt the handcuffs that bound him suddenly loosen and drop away; they had been set, by prearrangement, for only three minutes. Hé squirmed out of the middle of the group of captives, cut sharply to his left, and streaked for a garbage-bordered alleyway. The crime-detection men shouted sharply; one dashed after him, firing a blaster burst that nearly seared Catton's shoulder. The Earthman ducked into a beckoning doorway and crouched there a few minutes. He peeped out, finally, and saw that the captives had been taken away. One of Beryaal's men had remained behind, ostensibly to search for the escaped Dargonid, for the sake of appearances.

Catton emerged from the alley, grinning wryly. "Your idea of pretense is a little grim, brother. That shot of yours nearly hit me."

'The aim was faulty. I apologize."

"Where are the others?"

"Taken to the Crime Office for interrogation. I am officially to report that you were killed attempting escape. The girl will be released after questioning."

"How about the others?" "Intensive probing."

Catton nodded. "All right. Consider me killed attempting escape. I'm going to get this paint taken off me now."

He made his way through the back streets to the shop of the old Morilaru, which he found with a relatively small amount of difficulty. The old man was dozing again. Catton woke him and said, "Turn me into an Earthman again. The disguise has done its job."

Carton stripped and let the dye-remover be applied; in ten minutes he was once again himself. He gave the old man a one-throne piece, as promised, and then, grinning conspiratorially, said, "Here's another throne for you. But don't tell Nuuri I gave it to you."

"My deepest gratitude," murmured the Morilaru.

Catton was happy to be rid of the layer of coloring, the contact lenses, and all the rest. An Earthman again, he hurried to the Street of the Two Moons and hired a cab there to take him to the offices of the Interworld Commission on Crime.

En route, he had time to think about Estil Seeman. The girl had run away, or perhaps she had been abducted by Doveril—but where might they be? Catton thought he knew. The hint dropped by one of the hypnojewel smugglers seemed to indicate that the source of supply for the gems was somewhere on Skorg. It was possible that Doveril might have fled there with Estil. Perhaps, he thought, it would be profitable for him to go there as well—ostensibly investigating the hypnojewel trade, less ostensibly searching for the missing girl, and actually observing for Earth's purposes the second most important world in the Morilar-Skorg-Arenadd axis.

This time, when he arrived at Number Eleven in the Street of Government, he had no difficulty gaining entry to the offices of the Interworld Commission on Crime. He was, after all, a member of that Commission now himself. He went directly to Pouin Beryaal's office. Beryaal was not there, but Ennid Uruod, the flabby Arenaddin member of the Commission, was.

"Where's Beryaal?" Carton asked.

"Interrogating the prisoners. He and eMerikh enjoy such torments; my stomach is weaker." "How about the girl?"

Uruod lifted a fat-encased arm and pointed to an adjoining office. "In there, waiting for you. They've finished questioning her."

Catton thanked the Arenaddin and passed through the doorway into the next office. Nuuri was there, i looking tense and troubled. But she managed a smile as he entered.

"They've officially released me," she said.

"How about the others?"

She shrugged. "They'll get the usual fate. Interrogation until their minds crack. I pity them."

"You betrayed them," Catton reminded her bleakly.

She showed no sign of emotion. "I was betraying only Doveril. The rest were incidental. But Doveril is free, and they are downstairs in the interrogation chamber."

"They'll pick up Doveril eventually," Catton said.

"This is doubtful. By now he's probably hundreds of light-years from here."

"You think so?"

"I'm sure of it. Doveril frightens easily. And news moves rapidly here."

"Where would he be likely to run to?" the Earthman asked.

Nuuri said, "There are many worlds in the universe. He could be anywhere."

Catton frowned for a moment. "I'm planning to make a trip to Skorg shortly. Do you think there's any chance he might be there?"

"Skorg? Why do you go to Skorg?"

"The reason doesn't concern you, Nuuri. I'm going on official business."

"Hypnojewel business?" she asked curiously.

"Of course. And if I could find Doveril there—"

"Skorg is a crowded world. You'd have trouble finding anyone there."

Carton nodded. "I'm aware of that. But there are ways of finding people."

"I hope you find Doveril," she said with venom in her voice. "I want to see him on Pouin Beryaal's rack, coughing out his life as they comb his mind."

"You hated him enough to betray five of his friends," Carton said. "All because he crossed you in love. It's a strong revenge, Nuuri."

Her eyes fixed on him beadily. They were silent for a moment; then Nuuri said, "I have nothing further to say now. I will leave you."

"Will you keep in touch with me?" he asked.

"Why should ir

"I'm interested in wiping out the hypnojewel traffic," Cat-ton said. "You've helped me once. Possibly you can help me again."

She shook her head. "I'm not a professional informer. I did you a service to satisfy my own desires. But I feel no yearning to betray others to you."

"You realize that I could have you taken downstairs and put under deep probe?" he asked. "You've as much as admitted that you're concealing important information that could be useful to us."

She stared at him unwaveringly. "I realize that. Would you take me to interrogation after my service to you? Is this your reward?"

"You claimed you didn't want a reward."

"I want a safe-conduct out of this building as my reward. I've helped you once. Now let me go."

"In a moment," he said quietly. He glanced around the room, looking for traces of any hidden detector equipment. In a low voice he said, "I'm an Earthman, Nuuri. I'm interested in the safety and welfare of Earth."

"So?"

"There are stories circulating in the galaxy that imply that some worlds plan an attack on Earth. I'm trying to find out if anything lies behind those stories. Will you work for me?"

"In what way?"

"Help me investigate these rumors."

She smiled bitterly. "You aren't satisfied with my betrayal of friends. Now you'd have me betray my world as well."

"No betrayal is involved. I'm acting in the interests of galactic peace."

"What do I care about galactic peace?" '

"What do you care about being hauled downstairs to the interrogation room?" Catton said levelly.

She laughed. "You'll never gain allies with threats, Catton. I won't work for you. I'm only interested in seeing Doveril Halligon punished. Nothing else matters to me."

"Ill look for him on Skorg. And I apologize for seeming to threaten you. It was a mistake."

"A man in your position isn't permitted many mistakes," Nuuri remarked. "But 111 condescend to bargain with you, anyway. Let me out of this building untouched and I'll promise to forget this entire conversation."

"Fair enough," Catton agreed. "You can go."

She rose without another word and left. Catton walked to the window of the office and stared out, frowning troubledly. He realized he had probably said too much. But the girl had proven herself to be useful, and he had hoped to win her services. He needed an ally to help him uncover the facts Earth had sent him here to find; there was little hope of his finding anything alone.

The trip to Skorg was his best bet at the moment, he thought. He wondered whether anything useful had been mined out of the hapless unfortunates in the interrogation chamber. A hint as to the whereabouts of Doveril Halligon, perhaps. Doveril's disappearance was bound to be linked to the vanishing of Ambassador Seeman's daughter before long.

Catton returned to Beryaal's office. The Arenaddin had now been joined by Merikh eMerikh, the Skorg delegate to the Commission. Catton and the Skorg nodded coldly at each other in formal greeting.

Catton said, "How's the interrogation going?"

"It is all but over. Two of the prisoners have unfortunately succumbed. Beryaal is questioning the remaining three right now."

"And what's been learned?"

"Beryaal will tell you when he returns from the interrogation. But one fact appears certain. It will not be necessary to place the prisoners on trial after the interrogation. It is too bad, but we do not expect them to live."

VII.

Catton said nothing. These were alien worlds, where alien ideas of justice prevailed. It was not proper for him to object if the Morilaru preferred questioning their prisoners to death rather than bothering to try them. But it did indicate the sort of beings Earth was dealing with. Shrugging, Catton sat back to await the arrival of Pouin Beryaal. The Morilaru entered the Crime Commission's office ten minutes later. There was a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.

"The interrogation is over," Beryaal commented briskly as he took his seat at the head of the table.

"Were there any survivors?" Catton asked sardonically.

Beryaal took no notice of the Earthman's sarcasm. "I regret to say that the prisoners died during interrogation. But we obtained much useful information from them before they succumbed."

"I think," said the Arenaddin slowly, "that our new colleague from Earth has done a fine job in apprehending these five. I suggest a note of commendation be forwarded to the Terran World Government."

"The Earthman," said eMerikh of Skorg in his hollow voice, "has far exceeded the call of duty. Members of this Commission are not required to disguise themselves and search out the hypnojewel traders themselves."

"I wasn't required to do it, no," Catton agreed. "But it seemed a good way of getting something done. How long has this Commission been in existence—and how much has it accomplished?"

The Skorg glowered balefully at him. "We have been laying the groundwork for—"

"Please," Beryaal snapped. "We are wasting time in futile argument."

"Suppose you tell us, then," Catton said, "the results of the interrogation?"

"Transcripts are being prepared and will be made available to you shortly."

Catton shook his head. "Can't you summarize the findings without making us wait for the transcript? Was anything learned about sources of supply, ringleaders, methods of transportation, other smugglers?"

"You will see the transcript," Beryaal replied.

The door opened and a clerk entered, bearing a sheaf of vocotyped papers. The clerk moved obsequiously around the meeting-room, placing one booklet in front of each of the Commission members.

Carton picked his up. It consisted of three or four sheets stapled together. The front page bore the date and the heading, TRANSCRIPT OF INTERROGATION CONDUCTED BY THE INTERWORLD COMMISSION OF CRIME, Pouin Beryaal, Chairman.

The Earthman flipped rapidly through the document. It said remarkably little. The names of the five prisoners were given, and the text of a series of questions-and-answers with Beryaal as interrogator.

The questions-and-answers went like this:

Q. Do you admit attempting to sell a hypnojewel to a visiting Dargonid?

A. You have proof of that.

Q. Why do you sell hypnojewels?

A. To make money.

Q. Who is the leader of your group?

A. We were all equals.

Q. But wasn't there someone who served as contact man,

as go-between, as spokesman? A. We shared all responsibilities. Q. And how did you obtain the jewels you sold? A. We bought them. O. From whom?

A. From those who sell such things.

The entire transcript read that way. The five captives had played their torturers for fools; not once had a concrete fact been elicited. It was pathetic. The replies of the prisoners had been couched in evasions, half-truths, and truths that conveyed nothing. Nowhere in the document was there a hint as to the source of the hypnojewels, nor was there a mention of Doveril Halligon. Nuuri, Catton thought, would be fiercely angry if she ever found out that Doveril had not been implicated.

Because of his relative unfamiliarity with the printed Morilaru language, Carton was the last one to finish reading the transcript. When he had done with the final page, he looked up sharply at Beryaal.

"For this you killed five men?" Catton asked.

"They were stubborn. They would not answer."

Catton chuckled grimly. "It doesn't speak well for the skill of the Morilaru interrogators, in that case. Any idiot can kill a man under torture; skill is needed to extract information."

"The Earthman is right," protested the Arenaddin mildly. "There is remarkably little solid information in this transcript. It would seem that the prisoners led you a merry chase."

Catton sat back, frowning. The transcript was a little too devoid of fact to suit him. It was impossible to believe that the Morilaru interrogation system was as incompetent as this report indicated. Catton knew better than to take it at face value. Certainly truth serums and deep hypnosis might have been used to draw out the name of the group's supplier, the method used for getting the hypnojewels onto Morilar, the source from which they originated. What did they use in the interrogation, he wondered—the rack and the thumb-screw?

He could not believe that the interrogation had been as fruitless as this transcript implied. Which meant that the important data was being suppressed by Beryaal. But that made little sense. Why would the Crime Commission chairman be interested in holding back vital information from his fellow members, Catton wondered?

"It seems to me," Catton said, "that you've taken five choice sources of information and wasted them, Pouin Beryaal."

The Morilaru inclined his head amiably. "You are not satisfied with the results of our interrogation?"

"Satisfied with this?" Catton asked, tapping the skimpy transcript. "Of course I'm not satisfied. We've run ourselves right into a dead end. You yourself pointed out that our job is not to track down petty jewel-runners like the ones that died today, but to cut off the hypnojewel pipeline at its source. How does this set of questions and answers help us do that?"

"The Earthman is being unjust," said the Skorg, coming to Beryaal's defense. "I was present at the interrogation; you and our Arenaddin colleague were not. I can vouch for the fact that every attempt was made to elicit information from the prisoners."

Or else you and Beryaal are in cahoots, Catton thought. He shrugged and said, "All right. I'm not placing any charges of incompetence. I'm simply saying that I went out and got you five perfectly good sources of information, and you used them up and threw them away without getting a damned thing out of them."

Beryaal said, "Like most Earthmen, you are overly impatient. It's a characteristic of young and uncertain races."

"Maybe so. If it's a racial failing to want to get results, I plead guilty." Catton gestured with open hands. "The job of this Commission is to smash the hypnojewel racket. I'd like to get that job done as quickly and as directly as I can."

"Have you any immediate suggestions?" Beryaal inquired calmly.

"I have several," Catton said. "I've checked carefully through the record of your past deliberations, and so far as I can figure very little has been done by way of figuring out the planet of entry for the jewels. I'm not talking about the place of origin, now—I mean the planet that funnels hypno-jewels into the main stem of the galaxy. I think I have a lead on that planet's identity."

"Oh?" Beryaal said.

"When I was engaged in the purchase of that hypnojewel, someone let drop a remark implying that the planet where hypnojewels might be obtained from the makers was—was a major planet in this galaxy," Catton finished, deciding at the last moment not to name the world.

"This is hearsay, is it not?" Beryaal said.

"What of it?" Catton retorted. "It's worth investigating. At this stage, any lead at all is worth following up. And I intend to follow this one up personally."

"We have a network of agents for this purpose," remarked the Skorg.

"I realize that. I still intend to visit this planet on my own."

"With typical Earthman energy," Beryaal noted. "Very well; what is this planet you suspect?"

"Ill file my report when I return," said Catton.

Beryaal leaned forward. "It would be safer if you told us now. That way we could arrange for your protection, you see.

"And in the event of an accident to you," added the Skorg coldly, "we would know which planet it was you suspected. It is not wise to withhold information of such importance, Cat-ton."

"All right," the Earthman said. "Be it hereby read into our records, then. I'm requesting a leave of absence from my Commission duties in order to make a journey to Skorg."

Merikh eMerikh reacted as if he had been slapped. The thin, angular being jerked upright and goggled amazedly at Catton.

"Skorg? You claim the hypnojewel traffic originates on Skorg?"

"I make no claims," Catton said quietly to the outraged Skorg. "I simply want to check."

"This accusation is perhaps a trifle rash," Pouin Beryaal said slowly. "One must consider that crime prevention on Skorg is well organized, and that—"

"One must consider nothing," Catton snapped. "I'm leaving for Skorg immediately. If I find anything, 111 let you know."

Uruod, the Arenaddin, said in his gentle voice, "It is wrong for the delegate from Skorg to take the statement of the delegate from Earth as a personal insult. The honor of Skorg is not impugned."

Catton smiled thankfully at the blubbery Arenaddin. "I've made no accusations. For that matter, it might be wise to intensify investigation on Arenadd too—and on Morilar. There's no reason to assume that these hypnojewels necessarily come from outside the galactic core. I had hoped to get-some information out of the men I brought in today, but—" He gestured expressively.

"Very well," Pouin Beryaal said with obvious reluctance. "The delegate from Earth is, of course, free to conduct investigations wherever he pleases. Well manage to'carry on by ourselves until your return, Catton."

"Glad to hear it," the Earthman snapped. The meeting was rapidly degenerating into a backbiting contest; and, though the Arenaddin had attempted to act as a kind of moderator, Catton was aware that the true alignment was Beryaal, eMerikh, and Uruod against him. These aliens obviously did not want an Earthman stealing their thunder. He was on the Commission solely for the sake of appearances, because it was felt to be a measure of loosening the tension that bound the galaxy since the emergence of Earth as a major power. But they had never expected the Earth delegate to go charging around investigating such worlds as Skorg.

Well, they had no choice, Catton thought. They had a-greed to accept a delegate from Earth, and now they were stuck with him.

"Do you plan to make the trip alone?" Beryaal asked. "Or will you accept the use of the Commission staff?"

"I could use a few assistants," Catton said. "Ill need an interpreter, for one thing—I'm anything but fluent in the Skorg language. Ill also need an administrative adjutant, and a personal secretary. Three men; that ought to be sufficient."

"Will you make the necessary travel arrangements yourself?"

"Ill arrange for the passage, yes, out of my allotted expense fund," said the Earthman. "My passport isn't validated for Skorg, merely because I wasn't originally planning to go there, but I'm certain that my colleague eMerikh will help me make the necessary visa arrangements, and that there'll be no difficulties on that score."

Catton glanced inquisitively at the Skorg, who nodded
stiffly. Catton was certain that the tortured Morilaru had let
slip something about their source of supply being on Skorg,
and that Beryaal and eMerikh had agreed between them-
selves to keep that fact from the records. No wonder they
were annoyed at having Catton pop up with the same in-
formation, and, worse, embedding it inextricably in the Com-
mission minutes. It was too late for Beryaal and eMerikh
to do anything but acquiesce, now. Catton had successfully
boxed them in. v

Catton rose.

"Is there any further business to be discussed at this meeting?" he asked.

"No," Beryaal said. "I merely wished to present the results of the interrogation."

"Those results having duly been presented," Catton said, "I intend to leave now. You can reach me at the Terran Embassy, eMerikh, when you've obtained a visitor's permit for me."

"I will contact you then," the Skorg said.

Catton nodded to them, turned, and left the meeting room. It was late in the day, now. Some of the heat had left the air. He smiled as he thought of how discomforted his fellow Commission members had been. But their motives troubled him. Why hide information? Why object to his going to Skorg? It was a poor prognosis when he couldn't even trust the alleged forces of crime prevention on these worlds.

He decided to leave for Skorg on the first available flight. Perhaps, he thought, the trail might be less muddy there. But he doubted it. He realized that forces were operating on levels deeper than he suspected; the only thing certain was that Earth stood to lose in the coming maneuver for galactic power, if these worlds had their way.

VHI.

Two days later, a Terran Embassy autombile deposited Carton at the passenger desk of the Dyelleran Spaceport. In the Earthman's pocket was a ticket for a first-class passage, round trip from Morilar to Skorg and back, aboard the Skorg Spacelines vessel, Silver Spear. Two days of feverish preparation had preceded Catton's arrival at the spaceport.

It had been necessary to obtain an entry visa for Skorg; some fast subradio communication had taken care of that matter, with the more or less willing cooperation of Merikh eMerikh and the local Skorg Ambassador. It had also been necessary, for Catton's own protection, for him to receive a neural block inhibiting his sense of smell; the planetary odor of Skorg was something to make strong men blanch. And, for the same reason and at the same time, he had received a metabolic booster shot designed to reduce production of the bodily secretions that made an Earthman's smell so intolerable to a Skorg.

Thus fortified, Catton was ready to go. Three Morilaru attaches accompanied him, as he requested. Untroubled by budget restrictions, Catton had lightheartedly purchased first-class passages for the four of them on the twelve-day voyage—a matter of some eight thousand thrones, or better than $10,000 Terran, for the four tickets. The Silver Spear was a luxury liner. It was virtually a spaceborne city, holding nearly eight hundred passengers.

Catton and his three men, with their diplomatic visas, passed through the emigration desks with no trouble, and boarded the ship two hours before blastoff. The three aides said litde as they inspected their magnificent staterooms. Either they were not impressed, or else they were too overwhelmed by the luxury to be able to comment.

Alone, Catton surveyed his room with awe. It was twice the size of the cabin he had occupied on the Terran liner coming to Morilar, and that had been one of Earth's finest passenger vessels. On the Silver Spear his room was carpeted with thick broadloom, hung with noise-cushioning drapes, furnished with a handsome record player, a supply of music tapes, a video set which could tap the ship's immense library of Skorg films, and other elegant appurtenances. He sprawled out on the oversized bed, clamped his learning-disk of Skorg to his ear, and settled down for a couple of hours of intensive study of the Skorg language before blastoff time came.

An hour later, his cabin door chimed; Catton nudged the remote-wave opener and the door slid into its oiled niche. A Skorg in the uniform of a crewman waited in the corridor outside his room.

The Skorg bowed obsequiously, a gesture that looked strange coming from a member of that austere-faced species. "I am your steward, Mr. Catton," the Skorg said, in Morilaru. "If you lack anything, be sure to call upon me."

"Thanks," Catton said, using the Skorg word.

"Blastoff is in thirty minutes. When the signal comes, please go to your bed and remain on it until we enter free nulldrive. Dinner will be served one hour after the entry into warp, sir."

The steward bowed again and moved off down the hall. Catton closed the door, resetting his learning-disk and focusing his concentration once again on the difficult inflections of the Skorg tongue.

Blastoff was right on schedule. A speaker grid in the ceiling of his stateroom came to sudden life and advised him purringly in Skorg, Morilaru, and Arenaddin to remain on his bed until further word. Catton wondered what happened if you didn't understand any of the languages the instructions had been delivered in. You didn't travel the Skorg lines, in that case, he decided.

There was a countdown, in Skorg numbers. When it got down toward the final numbers Catton tensed involuntarily, waiting for the thrust of blastoff to jam him down against the spun foam of his bed.

". . . drog. . . .

. . halk-segan. . . .

". . . zhuur. . . .

". . . naair

Naal. Zero! But there was no fist of acceleration on the final count. Catton felt a momentary pressure, flattening him gendy against the bed, but it was so light a push that he could have remained upright through it without difficulty. Evidendy on a Skorg luxury liner, one traveled in luxury. Blastoff had been so thoroughly cushioned, probably by contragrav, that it almost seemed like an inertialess drive was at work.

Ten minutes after blastoff, the voice from the speaker grid advised Catton that it was now safe to leave one's bed, as the ship was now in nulldrive and would remain there until reaching Skorg. Dinner, the voice added, would be served in one hour.

Catton went on an exploratory trip through the vessel in the hour before dinner. He attracted a great deal of attention, as might have been expected; there were still few Earthmen in this part of the galaxy, and one traveling on a Skorg luxury liner was an extreme curiosity.

The ship was lavish. There was a grand ballroom, a smaller auditorium, two great opining halls (one reserved exclusively for Skorgs, the other open to all comers—a bit of deservedly instituted discrimination, considering the distinctive Skorg odor). Catton also saw a library of book-tapes, mostly in Skorg, with a scattering of Morilaru and Arenaddin volumes, and a recreation room designed to serve the recreational needs of several different species.

He ate that evening in the unrestricted dining room, since he had no entry into the Skorg room nor much desire to enter it; the bulk of his companions in the room were Morilaru, though he noted a few Arenaddin and even another Earthman. Catton resolved to introduce himself to the Earthman after the meal.

The food was Skorg food, mostly yellow vegetables and stringy lean meat—probably it was superbly prepared, but the raw materials were nothing much. The main dish was preceded by a cocktail which tasted astonishingly like a Terran martini, though Catton knew the Terran liquor industry had not yet established trade channels through to Skorg. During the meal Skorg wine was served—a bitter but palatable green liquid.

Catton encountered the other Earthman in the lounge after the meal. It was more of a simultaneous coinciding of orbit than a one-sided pursuit; the other Earthman, it seemed, had been anxious to meet Catton, too.

"My name is Royce, H. Byron Royce. I don't suppose you remember me, Mr. Catton."

Carton didn't. The Earthman was in his sixties, tall and weatherbeaten, with blunt, open features and faded pale-blue eyes. He was dressed conventionally in a Terran business suit. Catton had no idea who H. Byron Royce might be, but he hazarded a guess. "You were at that reception given for me at the Embassy in Dyelleran, weren't you?"

Royce smiled. "That's right. We exchanged a couple of words then, if you remember—"

"I'm afraid III need my memory refreshed," Catton confessed. "There were so many strange faces that night, you realize—"

"Sure, I know how it is. A hundred people come up and shake your hand, you can't remember all of 'em. Well, I'm Byron Royce of Royce Brothers, Terra. Does that ring any bells now?"

Carton nodded. Royce Brothers was an enterprising export firm; through holding companies, it controlled most of Terran trade over a span of fifty light-years out from Earth, and now, no doubt, was looking to extend its sway to Morilar, Skorg, and Arenadd. Catton realized he was talking to a billionaire. It was a slighdy unsettling thought.

"Bound for Skorg on diplomatic business, Mr. Catton?"

"Yes," Catton said. "I'm not at liberty to reveal anything, of course."

"Wouldn't think of prying," Royce said cheerily. "Naturally, if there's anything involved that might possibly have an effect on Royce Brothers, I'd gready appreciate a leetie hint, but-"

"I'm afraid it's a matter of considerable secrecy," Catton said, perhaps a bit too brusquely. "But I can tell you that it's of no commercial interest to you."

Royce took the hint and changed the subject immediately. "Too bad about the Ambassador's daughter, wasn't it? Pretty little girl like that running away to nowhere. You think they're going to find her, Mr. Catton?"

Catton shrugged. "It's unlikely, unless she wants to be found. The galaxy's too big for an efficient search to be carried on."

"Funny, that note she left."

"Oh, you heard about it?"

"The Ambassador himself told me, with tears in his eyes. Ran away with the man she loved. He didn't have any idea who that might be. Damned if they didn't run a checkup on every Earthman who'd been on Morilar in the past six months, and there wasn't one of them missing."

"So there's no notion whom she ran off with, eh?" Catton asked.

"Not a touch. Mr. Seeman half figured she'd made the whole part up, about her lover. But he couldn't understand why she'd want to run away."

A Skorg steward passed, carrying a tray of drinks. He paused in front of Catton and Royce and inquired in Morilaru if they were interested. Catton helped himself to a highball which tasted vaguely peppery; Royce, protesting that he never drank, declined the tray.

Catton sipped his drink. The lounge was crowded; there were life-forms of a dozen kinds in it, including, Catton noted with some amusement, a Dargonid who might have been the twin of the one who had purchased the hypnojewel from Nuuri Gryain's unfortunate friends. Catton also noticed two of his attaches nearby—keeping an eye on him, no doubt.

Suddenly he heard a distant dull booming sound, reverberating as if far away. A moment later it was repeated, slightly louder but still muffled and faint. Conversation in the lounge was unaffected.

But H. Byron Royce was standing on tiptoes, head cocked to one side for better hearing. He looked worried.

"What's the matter?" Catton said.

There was a third boom—still louder.

Muscles tightened suddenly in Royce's cheeks. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here, Catton." "Out of here? Why?" "Hurry up!"

Mystified, Catton followed the tall, old Earthman through the crowd of chatting passengers and out into the com-panionway that fronted the lounge. A fourth time the sound came—and, out here, Catton could hear it distinctly and clearly.

It sounded like an explosion. "What's going on?" Catton asked.

"I don't know," Royce replied. "But every time I hear loud booms on a space-liner, I get out into the hall and start looking for a lifeship. I was aboard the Star of the Night when it blew up off Capella in '83."

A fifth boom came rippling up from the depths of the ship—and this time Catton fancied he could hear girders giving way, strutwork ripping loose, engines exploding, men dying. A drive-room explosion aboard a faster-than-light spaceliner was a dreadful thing. Even if the ship survived the blast, it would no longer have means of propulsion, and would drift helplessly, unlocatable, until its food supply ran out. There would be nightmarish frenzy before that time, culminating in cannibalism.

Royce began to run, and Catton followed him. Other people were coming out of the lounge, now. Footsteps echoed in the companionway.

A loudspeaker voice said, "There is no cause for alarm, ladies and gentlemen." The voice was speaking in Skorg, but it hastily repeated the words in Morilaru. "Please remain where you are. Members of the crew will aid you. Do not panic. Do not panic."

It might just as well have been an order to the tides to hold back. A mass of screaming people came sweeping out of the lounge, crowding desperately into the narrow companionway. The loudspeaker's shouted exhortations were drowned out by the cries of the crowd. Another explosion sounded, this one larger than the others.

"That was the central drive chamber blowing," Royce muttered. "This ship is done for."

He paused at a doorway, flung it open, and went racing down a ramp toward the lifeships. A ship the size of the Silver Spear was probably equipped with fifty or seventy-five tiny lifeships, each capable of holding a dozen passengers', fifteen or twenty in an emergency. The lifeships had miniature warp-drives and enough fuel to get them to a nearby planet.

Royce swung over the hatch of the nearest lifeship with the amazing self-preservation impulse of a man to whom life is very important indeed,. and hurled himself in. Catton followed. A moment later five other people rushed into the small ship.

Catton was surprised to see that one of them was the Morilaru who had accompanied him as his administrative adjutant. Another was an enormous Arenaddin who was bleating like a frightened cow. Two others were Morilaru women clad in costly gowns—and, astonishingly, they had dragged aboard the ship a man in the uniform of a member of the crew. The Skorg was writhing and protesting, trying to free himself. "Crewmen must not board lifeships until all passengers are safe," he was insisting.

"Quiet, you idiot," one of the Morilaru women snapped. "You want to stay alive, and so do we. We need a skilled spaceman aboard this ship." They fastened their fingernails into the Skorg's shirt, and held him fast.

The lifeship hatch opened again, and a Morilaru entered, wild-eyed and frantic.

"The ship's blowing up," he gasped. "Let's blast off out of here before we get killed!"

Catton started to protest. There were only eight people in the lifeship—nine, giving the Arenaddin double credit for his bulk. There was room for three or four more passengers, as many as ten if need be. It was grossly unfair to blast off half full.

But as he moved forward, one of the Morilaru women stepped in. front of him and blocked his path. The male Morilaru hastily dogged the hatch shut and yanked down on the red-handled lever that released the lifeship from its fastenings.

A hatch in the side of the wounded mother ship opened as the lifeship glided down its passageway and into space. Instants later, a gigantic explosion split the Silver Spear apart. The lifeship, with its eight occupants, rocked and tossed in the shock wave caused by the explosion—and then righted itself and sped off into space.

IX.

A lifeship has only rudimentary controls. There was a view-screen, a plot-tank, a simplified course-computer, and a book of instructions, trilingual. As Catton thought back over it, half an hour after the explosion, he was grateful that a crewman had come along.

But the crewman was unhappy about it. His name was Nyaruik Sadhig, and he brooded loudly about his plight. "If I ever survive this, 111 be sacked," he muttered. "Think of it—a crewman entering a lifeship and letting passengers remain behindl"

"You were coerced," Catton pointed out. "They can't hold that against you."

"Yes," said one of the Morilaru women who had dragged him aboard. She produced a tiny woman-size blaster from her carryall. "I'll testify that I forced you into the ship at gunpoint," she said. "That ought to count in your favor, won't it?"

"No," said Sadhig bleakly. "According to the law, I'm supposed to resist such 'coercion'—even at the cost of my life. I'm ruined, damn it! Why did you have to pull me aboard your accursed lifeship?"

"Because," remarked the other Morilaru female sweetly, "we wanted to live. And we weren't sure we could pilot this ship ourselves."

"How far are we from civilization?" Royce asked.

Sadhig shrugged. "It's impossible to tell until I've had a go with the computer."

"But we can't be very far," objected one of the Morilaru women. "It was still the first night of the trip. We should still be close to Morilar."

Sadhig shook his head. "I'm afraid you don't understand how the nulldrive works. The ship's generators thrust us into a fivespace continuum, and when the computer says so we return to normal space. But points in nullspace don't have a one-to-one correlation with points in normal space. There's no matching referent. We might be a billion light-years from Morilar—or we might be just next door."

The explanation flew over the heads of the women. They merely looked dazed.

Royce said, "Very well, young man. Suppose, as you seem to be the only spaceman among us, you find out just where we are, then."

The Morilaru rose and made his way through the crowded single cabin to the control section up front. Catton, sitting in the farthest corner of the cabin, scowled darkly at the floor. Lifeships were all well and good, but this business of traveling in nullspace did have its drawbacks. He had heard of lifeship survivors beached on the far shores of the universe, returning to civilization only in extreme old age.

Suddenly the problems of Skorg, Morilar, and Arenadd seemed very unimportant to him. If they emerged from the warp continuum far enough away, he would be stranded long enough so that the current crisis became so much galactic ancient history.

The cabin was silent while the Morilaru made his computations; the only sound was the steady rasping breathing of the Arenaddin. The bulky creature did not enjoy the artificially sustained gravity of the lifeship, which was set for Skorg-norm, or about 1.7 times the pull on Arenadd. Carton was mildly discomforted by the gravity—it was also 1.4 Earthnorm, too. The difference added some seventy pounds to his weight, better than two hundred to the Are-naddin's; small wonder the alien was uncomfortable.

At length the Skorg crewman returned from the computer, wearing an unreadable expression—Skorg facial expressions seemed morose at their most cheerful, and grew darker from there.

"Well?" Royce demanded. "What's the bad news?" "It isn't as bad as it might have been," Sadhig said. "But it isn't very good, either." "Where are we?" asked Catton.

"We're five hundred light-years from Morilar," said the crewman.

"Is that within the range of this ship?" Royce asked.

"Unfortunately, no. We have a limited range—about a hundred light-years in radius. And, also unfortunately, there seems to be only one planet within our immediate access."

"What's its name?" asked one of the Morilaru women.

The Skorg gestured unhappily. "It has none. It's listed on the charts as DX 19083. It's a small jungle world, claimed by Morilar but never settled. The chart says there's a rescue

beacon erected there, so we can call for help once we land." "Doesn't this ship have a radio?"

"Yes," the Skorg said. "An ordinary radio. It doesn't have a generator big enough to power a nullspace communicator. So we could send out a message, but it would take five hundred years for it to reach Morilar. We don't have quite that much time, I'm afraid."

"So we'll have to make a landing on this jungle planet," Catton said. "And use the rescue beacon communicator to get ourselves picked up."

"What if the rescue beacon is out of order?" asked Royce.

"There's small chance of that," said the Skorg crewman. "The beacons are built to last, and they are service-checked every ten years. The greater danger is that we will not be able to find the beacon, once we land. But we must risk it. I will begin immediately to compute a course taking us to DX 19083, unless there are objections."

There were none. Sadhig returned to the control cabin and busied himself with the relatively simple job of targeting the lifeship toward the uninhabited world.

Catton prowled uneasily around the cabin. It was crowded enough, even with less than capacity aboard. He opened a cabinet and found a considerable food supply and an elaborate medical kit. A second cabinet yielded tools—blasters, electrohatchets, bubbletents, a collapsible canoe no bigger than a bastketball when folded.

They were well provided for. But the delay would be a nuisance. And in case they had any kind of survival problems, most of the' lifeship passengers would be drags on the group. The two Morilaru women, Catton thought, would be less than useless in any kind of situation of hardship. And the Arenaddin was obviously not accustomed to roughing it. Catton figured that Sadhig and Royce could be counted on to do their share of work. That left two Morilaru men— Woukidal, his adjutant, and the other man, the one who had released the lifeship from its parent vessel, and who had not spoken a word since.

Catton made his way forward. Sadhig was bent over the computer, tapping out course indications.

"Any difficulties?" Catton asked in Skorg.

Sadhig looked up. "Of course not. A child could operate this lifeship. But those women had to drag me aboard—"

"Still brooding about that?"

"I shall be in disgrace when I return to Skorg. My father will never forgive me. Do you know who my father is, Earthman?"

Catton shook his head.

The Skorg said, "My father is Thunimon eSadhig, Earth-man. First Commander of the Skorg Navy. How will he feel when he learns that his eldest son escaped from a damaged ship in a lifeship?"

Sadhig's face was cold and tightly drawn. Catton realized that within the Skorg ethic, it was undoubtedly a humiliation for a crewman to escape alive while passengers died, no matter what the circumstances. He pitied the Skorg.

"What position did you hold on the Silver Spear?" Catton asked.

"Flight Consultant First Class. I was the eighth ranking officer—assistant to the astrogator."

'Those women sure picked the right man when they collared you, thenl"

"They seized blindly," Sadhig said without looking up from his work. "For all they knew, they were snaring one of the cooks. But a cook could have piloted this craft as well as I do." Bitterly, Sadhig snapped down the course-lock and rose from the controls. "There," he said. "It is done. We will make landing in two days absolute time, Earthman. And then we must find the rescue beacon, or we will die. I do not greatly care."

"If it's a disgrace to leave a ship and let passengers remain behind," Catton said, "it must be equally disgraceful to be cast away with passengers and not expend every effort to ensure their survival."

The Skorg nodded. "You are right. I intend to help all I can. Your lives are important to me; mine no longer matters."

Catton felt that the conversation was taking an uncomfortable turn. To change it he said, "Just what happened aboard the Silver Spear? There was some land of explosion in the drive compartment, wasn't there?"

The Skorg's cold eyes glinted sardonically. "Yes, there was 'some kind of explosion,' all right."

"I thought such accidents were so rare as to be just about mathematically nonexistent."

"Statistically," said the Skorg, "you're correct. But this was not an accident. Nor, stricdy speaking, was it an explosion."

"Not an accident? What do you mean?"

"I had little time to gather information before I was forced into this lifeship. But as I was told by my superior, five implosion bombs had been concealed in the drive compartment before the voyage. One would have been enough to disable the ship. Five destroyed it completely. Hundreds must have died."

Catton was taken sharply aback. "Implosion bombs—you mean, sabotage?"

"What else? The ship was deliberately destroyed. I have no idea who would do such a thing."

Shrugging, Catton returned to the rest of the group in the main segment of the ship. "We're landing in two days," he told Royce in Terran. "Eveiything's under control, according to the Skorg."

"I heard part of your conversation. What were you saying about implosion bombs?"

"Sadhig told me that the ship was blown up deliberately. Five bombs went off in the drive compartment."

"What? Eight hundred passengers, aboard, and—"

"Quiet," Catton said. "There's no point letting everyone know. Therell be enough hysteria if we have trouble finding that beacon."

Sadhig's words had greatly disturbed Catton. There were many reasons why someone would want to destroy a luxury liner in transit—to collect insurance, to gain notoriety, to dispose of some important figure, even to provoke a war. Carton's thoughts kept coming back to the assassination possibility. Suppose, he thought, it had been decided to get rid of him before his investigation proceeded-further. Blowing up a ship to accomplish his murder was on the drastic side, he admitted. But these were alien beings. Their innermost reactions were not necessarily the same as a Terran's. Their values differed from Earth's at the most basic levels.

Of course, he realized he might be greatly exaggerating the situation. There had been other important people on the Silver Spear— Royce, for one, a major figure in interstellar commerce. No doubt the cream of Skorg society had been aboard. He had no right to assume that an act that killed hundreds of innocent people had been aimed directly at him. But it was something to consider, in any event, when and if he finally reached Skorg.

Life on the small ship was not pleasant in the two days that followed. Privacy was impossible, sanitation difficult. Tempers sharpened. Royce complained privately that he found the Skorg pilot's odor almost unbearable, but that he was struggling to ignore it. Catton was thankful for the sensory block that prevented him from undergoing such difficulties.

The Morilaru women seemed interested only in eating; Catton compelled them to abide by a rationing system, and unofficially established a watch rotation so that an eye would be kept on the food cabinet at all times; he, Sadhig, and Royce took turns at the job.

The Arenaddin was in considerable pain; the relatively high gravity was troubling him, and he was not concealing the fact. Catton and Sadhig spent some time trying to get at the mechanism that controlled the artificial gravity on the lifeship, but the box was hermetically sealed and welded too carefully for opening by amateurs. The idea was to keep passengers from tinkering with the lifeship's gravity and perhaps inadvertently squashing themselves flat under a twenty-gee pull. Since there was no other way of alleviating the Arenaddin's difficulties, Catton went prowling through the medical supplies for a sedative. He found one whose label was printed in Skorg, Morilaru, and Arenaddin, and which was presumably, therefore, suitable for use by members of all three species. Catton injected an entire ampoule into the Arenaddin's arm after considerable trouble locating the proper vein beneath the insulation of fat; the Arenaddin slept soundly for the rest of the trip.

At the end of the second day, Sadhig reported that the mass-detector showed them within reach of their destination. The landing would have to be made on manual deceleration, since there was no spaceport below to supply a landing-beam as guide. It was impossible to wake the Arenaddin, so he was strapped down securely, and the other passengers clambered into the deceleration cradles and waited for the landing.

There was an instant of transition as the lifeship left nullspace and re-entered the normal universe. A planet burst into view on the viewscreen, green except for the blueness of its seas. Up front, Sadhig caressed the controls of the manual-landing keyboard.

The landing itself took better than an hour. The tiny ship swung down on the uninhabited planet in ever-narrowing circles. Catton felt the jounce as the ship cracked into the thickening atmosphere. Gravity dragged at him; the ship began to drop.

It touched down gently. Catton glanced out the single port in the passenger cabin. The landscape that greeted him was profuse with vegetation. The scene had the fierce grandeur of prehistory.

X.

They han the usual tests before leaving the ship. The lifeship's instruments indicated an atmosphere of breathable oxygen-nitrogen-plus-inerts-and-carbon-dioxide constitution, though both the oxygen and the CO_z were on the high side for Carton's tastes— 34% oxygen, 1% carbon dioxide. It was a rich mixture for an Earthman to breathe, even more so for the hapless Arenaddin; the Skorg and the four Mor-ilaru would not be bothered by the high oxygen content. Gravity, Catton was pleased to note, was .5 Skorg-norm, which was about three-quarters of a gee by Terran standards; the Arenaddin would enjoy the respite from Skorg gravitation, while Sadhig and the Morilaru, all accustomed to the fairly stiff gravitation of their native worlds, were apt to feel a bit light-footed and queasy-stomached for a while. Atmospheric pressure at sea-level was—as best as Catton could translate it from Skorg terms—18.5 psi, which was something on the soupy side.

One important fact remained to be determined before they left the ship.

"How far are we from the rescue beacon?" Catton asked. Sadhig's lean face was puckered into one immense frown.

"I'm still trying to get a fix," the Skorg said. "I'm picking up the carrier beam intermittendy, but until I get the directional fix I can't—ah—there!" Sadhig began to scribble computations in the involved squiggles that were Skorg script. He chewed on the stylus for a moment, added up a column, fed the results into the lifeship's miniature computer, and waited for confirmation. It came, a moment later. "Well?" Carton asked.

"It's better than I hoped for, considering I didn't have any idea where that damned beacon was located. We hit the right continent—our luck's with us. We're only about five hundred miles due south of the beacon. It could have been a lot worse."

"Five hundred miles!" Carton exclaimed.

Sadhig nodded. "By forced marches, we ought to get there in a month's time. We don't have a month's food, of course, but we ought to be able to find something edible in the jungle."

Catton peered through the viewscreen. He saw close-packed vegetation, beady with moisture. This was a young planet, only seventy million miles from its Sol-type yellow sun. The temperature out there, according to the instruments, was about 310 degrees on the Skorg scale, which was reckoned up from Absolute Zero. Sadhig informed him that the mean temperature on Morilar was about 305 in Skorg degrees; juggling the figures hastily, Catton decided that the temperature outside was in the neighborhood of 110 Fahrenheit. Hiking for a month on a damp, humid, world like this wasn't going to be any Boy Scout jaunt.

When Catton returned to the rest of the group, he found them stirring uneasily; none of them had any basic scientific understanding of the problems involved in landing on an unexplored world, and they regarded Catton and Sadhig with some suspicion.

"Well?" Royce asked. "What have you two been figuring out?"

"The planet's livable," Catton said. "We can all breathe the air, the gravity is fairly low, and the temperature isn't much hotter than that of Morilar. We won't be comfortable, but well survive. The rescue beacon is five hundred miles north of here. If there aren't any large bodies of water in between to give us trouble, we ought to reach it in a month."

"A month?" gasped the older and more talkative of the two Morilaru women. "You mean we're going to walk for a month in that jungle?"

"You don't have to accompany us. You can stay behind," Catton said. He could just as well do without the women on the trek. "Well leave you a blaster and your pro rata share of the food, and you can live in the ship. When the rescue ship arrives, well have him pick you up—if he can find you in this jungle."

"I don't like that idea. But why can't we fly this ship to the beacon?"

"Two reasons," said Sadhig crisply. "The first is that we have very little fuel, possibly not enough for a blastoff. The second is that this lifeship is not a precision vessel. It is virtually a toy. If we attempted a new blastoff and landing, there is no guarantee we will not come down even further from the beacon."

"Oh," she said faintly. "Well, in that case—I guess we walk!"

The trek began an hour later. The ship was stripped of everything that was portable and might have some conceivable use. Catton, who had taken charge of the group without any nomination or intention, parceled the food out equally for each to carry, for the reason (which he did not voice) that in case of the sudden disappearance of one member of the party he did not want the entire supply of a given item to be lost. Similarly, he distributed the blasters and other weapons and tools.

When the outfitting was done, they set out—Catton and Royce in the lead, followed by Woukidal and the other male Morilaru, then the two Morilaru women, with Sadhig and the Arenaddin bringing up the rear. Catton set a jaunty pace for the party. The air was thick and rich, invigorating almost to the point of intoxication; after a few hundred yards the Earthman realized that he would bum himself out quickly at this pace, and he slowed up. With air that was more than a third oxygen to breathe, it was easy to overlook the bothersome heat and humidity; between the low gravity and the richness of the air, Catton felt an exuberance he had never known before.

The vegetation consisted largely of gigantic trees, thirty or forty feet thick at the base, towering far into the sky. The trees had no limbs for at least their first hundred feet of height; far above the ground they branched heavily, and their crowns intermingled, with a thick mesh of vines to provide a virtual roof for the forest. Evidendy the ceiling two hundred feet above blocked most of the rainfall from the jungle floor; it was sparsely vegetated except for occasional seedlings and man-high fems. A soft red-brown carpet of dead leaves lay underfoot. Compass in hand, Catton doggedly led his litde band on a steady northward path, pausing every ten minutes or so to malce sure that no stragglers were falling behind.

It was difficult to tell when the day was actually ending, because the close-knit forest roof kept most sunlight from penetrating anyway. After three hours—Carton's watch was calibrated in Galactic Absolute Time, whose minute was arbitarily pegged to Morilaru time and whose day lasted twenty-six and a fraction Terran hours—Catton called a rest halt.

"And about time we stopped, too," sighed the younger of the Morilaru women. "We've been walking forever!"

"We've covered about seven miles," Catton said. "That's a pretty fair stint for people who aren't trained hikers. We'll rest for a while and then go on until nightfall hits us."

He distributed anti-fatigue tablets—the medical kit held a packet of five hundred tablets, which would be ample for the entire month if they were parceled out with prudence. After half an hour of resting, they continued on. Twilight overtook them within another hour.

They made camp by the side of a small stream that had accompanied them northward for more than a mile. Woukidal and Royce inflated four bubbletents—one to be shared by the two women, one to be used by the Morilaru who had ejected the ship and the Arenaddin, and a third to be shared by Catton, Royce, and Woukidal. The Skorg was permitted to, sleep alone.

While Royce and Woukidal busied themselves with the tents, the women were sent out to gather wood for a fire, and Catton and Sadhig budgeted out food for the evening meal. The Arenaddin was still groggy from sedation, and Catton gave him no task.

Night fell quickly. The little planet had no moon, but through the breaks in the jungle roof could be seen the bright dots of unfamiliar constellations. The temperature dropped considerably during the night.

A watch system was instituted. Catton stood the first three hours himself, then woke Sadhig, who passed the duty along to Woukidal after three more hours. Night was nine hours long. The entire day, Catton discovered, was slightly more than one Galactic Absolute day in length—about thirty hours by Terran reckoning. His body was quick to adjust to variations in its schedule. Only the Arenaddin, accustomed to a day that was nearly twice that of a Terran one, would experience any particular disorientation, and before many days he would be fully adjusted to the new schedule of living.

Three days passed without significant incident. The local fauna made itself evident quickly enough, but nothing of an unpleasant size appeared: the animals that showed themselves were no bigger than Terran sheep, at best, and showed no hostile intentions. The animals were constructed on the standard four-limbed partem of most oxygen-breathing life-forms; they appeared to be marsupial mammals, judging from those who came close enough to be studied. Several looked as though they might be useful when the regular food supply ran out, as it would probably do in another seven or eight days.

There were a few annoying flurries of rain; the castaways could hear the water pounding the jungle roof, and enough rainwater trickled down to make life uncomfortable below. The moist clothes began to mildew rapidly. Insects became a nuisance, too; they came big on this planet, some of them ugly beasts with wingspreads of a foot. The big ones did not seem to sting—Catton imagined it would be a nasty experience to be stung by one—but some of the smaller lands did. Why is it, Catton wondered, that mosquitoes happened to evolve on 95 percent of the worlds of the universe?

At the mid-day break on the fourth day, however, when they had covered better than fifty miles since leaving the ship, the Arenaddin suddenly declared he could go no further.

The massive creature was seated on a tree stump. Rolls of fat sagged around his middle, and his breathing was rough and irregular. The Arenaddin's orange skin was wet with perspiration. He pointed to his swollen feet. The six splayed toes were designed to support three hundred pounds of bulk without collapsing, but they had never been intended to take their owner on extended hikes through a forest.

"Go on without me," the Arenaddin insisted. "I'm slowing you all up. And I can't last much longer—I'm not built for this kind of strain."

"We'll build a litter," Catton said. "We ought to be able to manage you."

The Arenaddin shook his great globe of a head sadly from side to side. "It is not worth your trouble. I consume too much food, and I do no work. Let me remain behind."

But Catton would not hear of it. While the others ate, he started to plan out the most efficient sort of litter to carry the Arenaddin. Two sturdy branches about six feet long, he decided, with one of the duriplast ponchos swung between them. The Arenaddin could ride in the poncho as if he were in a hammock. Two men between them should be able to support his weight for short stretches; Royce was a little old for that kind of a strain, but there were still four able-bodied men who could take turns at it.

Catton began to scout around for a tree whose branches were low enough for cutting down. It took a while; the adult trees were bare for a hundred feet, while most of the seedlings were too spindly. He found one at last—a young tree no more than thirty feet high, with forking branches thick enough to hold the Arenaddin's weight. Catton turned, meaning to call to Woukidal and Sadhig to help him with the logging operation.

He heard the swift sizzling sound made by a blaster fired on narrow beam.

As a matter of reflex, Catton flung himself to the jungle floor. But no second shot came. Deciding that it had not been aimed at him, Catton rose and returned to the group.

The Arenaddin was dead. He lay sprawled grotesquely in the middle of the clearing, a blaster still in his hand. He had fired one narrow-beam shot upward into his mouth; it was an instantaneous death.

Royce was staring in blank-faced horror. Neither the Skorg nor the four Morilaru seemed particularly moved by the suicide.

Catton glared at them. He, Royce, and Sadhig were the only ones armed with blasters.

Royce was pointing at the Skorg. "It—it was his gun!" Royce said in a shaky voice.

Catton wheeled on Sadhig. "Is this true? Did you let him take your gun away?"

"No," the Skorg said calmly. "I gave it to him."

"Gave it? Why'd you do a mad thing like that?"

"He asked me for it," Sadhig replied. "He saw that you refused to honor his request to be left behind, and he was determined to remove himself rather than become a burden to the group."

Catton goggled. "You knew he was going to commit suicide—and yet you gave him the blaster?"

"Of course," the Skorg said with some surprise. "It was the least I could do for him. He was in physical pain, and he felt a necessity to do away with himself. Would you refuse a fellow being the means of death?"

Catton could not answer. Once again it was a conflict of values; the Skorg saw nothing ethically wrong with handing a weapon to a declared suicide, and no amount of debate would ever produce agreement on the point. Catton turned away. The Arenaddin had, after all, acted in the best interests of the group. Carrying a cripple would have meant a delay of many days in reaching the beacon. But as an Earthman Catton held certain ideas about the sanctity of life that left him chilled by the matter-of-factness of the Arenaddins decision.

In accordance with Arenadd traditions, they cremated the corpse and scattered the ashes. With that task out of the way, they donned their gear and moved on northward. Catton realized an hour later that they had never even known the dead Arenaddin's name.

XI.

On the fourteenth day of the trek—Catton estimated they had journeyed better than two hundred miles northward, by virtue of unflagging discipline—Woukidal, the adjutant appointed by the Interworld Commission on Crime to aid Catton during his investigations on Skorg, fell ill of some jungle fever.

They had no choice but to pitch camp and treat him. A Morilaru would not commit suicide as lightheartedly as the Arenaddin had done, merely to ease the burden on the others; in any event, Woukidal was beyond consciousness, unable to make any such decisions.

They rigged a tent for the ailing Morilaru and decided to wait until the fever broke before moving on. Woukidal lay twisting and tossing in the tent, his eyes puffed shut, his face swollen, sweat-beaded, skin paled almost to a light ultramarine. He had alternate spells of chills and perspiration; half the time he was racked by shivers, the rest he lay drenched in sweat.

Catton found a drug in the medical kit which claimed to be an antipyretic; it was labelled in Skorg and Morilaru, but not in any other language. Evidently Skorg metabolic systems and Morilaru ones were similar enough for the same drugs to be effective for both. Catton wondered bleakly what would happen if he or Royce came down with the fever. They would die, no doubt.

He injected an ampoule of the antipyretic into the big vein at the side of the Morilaru's throat, and within an hour the fever had dropped two degrees. Woukidal was reading five degrees above that figure, and unless the fever broke soon it would kill him.

That evening, after Catton had administered a second dose of the drug, he wandered off to his own tent and sprawled out on his back to rest. The jungle air, hot and moist, pressed down clammily. He thought back over the two weeks they had spent in the jungle.

First there had been the Arenaddin's suicide. Then, on the seventh day, the near-mutiny of the older Morilaru woman, who demanded to rest a full day—not for any reasons of sabbath, but simply because she was tired. Catton had granted her four hours during the hottest part of the day, and then had forced her to get up and begin walking.

On the ninth day they had come to the lake—better than a mile wide, and extending so far in either direction that it might as easily have been a slow-moving river. They had inflated the coracle and made it across, gear and all, in four trips. Catton shuddered as he remembered the clashing teeth of the water reptile that rose from the depths to spear the bottom of their coracle on the final trip. It had filled with water in minutes, and they had just made it across. If they encountered another body of water between here and the beacon, they were in trouble.

On the eleventh day, Catton thought, they had met the Monster. It had been fairly harmless, at that—an amiable dinosaur-type, ninety or a hundred feet long with half an ounce of brain. But it had damned near put one of its huge feet down squarely on Sadhig as it blundered across their path. The incident, at the time, had been funny to all but the Skorg—but it would not be very amusing if they chanced to encounter a carnivorous beast of the same size. Which they might very well do, with three hundred more miles of jungle between them and the rescue beacon, Catton thought darkly.

And now, on the fourteenth day, Woukidal was down with some nuisance of a fever. The Morilaru was rather a cold fish, obviously instructed by Pouin Beryaal to keep a close watch on his superior and probably told to report back if Catton stumbled over anything important on Skorg. Caton had doubts of the man's loyalty—but, dammit, the Morilaru was a sentient being, and Catton was going to do everything he could to help him recover.

The flickering campfire just outside the opening of Carton's tent revealed a tall figure standing at the tent mouth. It was Royce.

"What is it?" Catton asked. "Did Woukidal's condition change?"

"He's talking," Royce said.

"Rationally?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come listen," Royce replied.

Catton followed the older man across the clearing to the tent where Wouikdal lay. The Morilaru women were sprawled near the fire; Sadhig and the other Morilaru were asleep. Catton could hear low moaning and muttering coming from Woukidal's tent.

The sick Morilaru seemed to be a little better, but not very much; his face still had the flushed, moist look of fever. He was talking to himself deliriously. Catton leaned close, but failed to make any sense out what Woukidal was saying.

"It's just so much gibberish," Catton said. "He was talking sense before. Ask him—ask him about matter duplicators," Royce said.

Catton looked up, startled. "Matter duplicators?"

"He was mumbling about them before. Ask him."

Catton bent low over the feverish face. "Woukidal! Can you hear me?"

The muttering continued with no apparent response to Carton's question.

Catton groped for the medicine kit on the ground near Woukidal's cot. He pulled out an antipyretic ampoule, knocked the safety cap off with his thumb, and pressed the syringe against Woukidal's throat vein. There was a faint hiss as the sonic spray drove the drug into the Morilaru's bloodstream. Catton waited a few moments; as the drug began to take effect, Woukidal's fever visibly abated.

"What's this about matter duplicators, Woukidal?" Catton asked quiedy.

"Duplicators . . . being built. Sent to Earth."

Catton's eyes widened. Matter duplicators had been discovered in the galaxy hundreds of years ago. They were long since under strict ban on every world; it was death to manufacture one or even own one, since a matter duplicator could wreck a world's economy overnight.

"Who's building matter duplicators?" Catton asked.

Evidendy the Morilaru's tongue had been loosened by the fever and the drugs. He tossed restlessly, eyes still tight shut, and said, "We are. To finish off Earth. We'll send hundreds."

"Where are the duplicators coming from?" "Beryaal can get them," Woukidal murmured. "Beryaal!"

"He's—he's in charge. And eMerikh, the Skorg. To crush Earth. Send hundreds of duplicators to Earth. I—I—"

Woulddal's words trailed off into meaningless nonsense. Despite the evening heat, Catton felt chilled. He glanced up at Royce.

"Do you think he's serious? Or is it just some kind of fantasy he was having because of the drugs?"

"It's a pretty improbable fantasy to have," Royce said. "I'm inclined to believe him. There've been stories drifting around that Morilar and Skorg are cooking up some kind of maneuver against Earth."

Catton nodded tightly. "I've heard the stories too. But matter duplicators—that violates every code these aliens have!" He bent over the Morilaru again. "Woukidal! Can you hear me?"

"It's no use," Royce said. "He won't be coherent any more. The drug's putting him to sleep."

They left the tent. Catton swatted at the insects that droned annoyingly around his head. Woukidal's unintentional revelation opened many corridors of possibility. Beryaal in charge of the plot! Beryaal, head of the Crime Commission, himself violating the most basic agreement of the galaxy, an agreement arrived at centuries before Earth ever sent a ship into space!

That explained many things. If Beryaal were the leading figure in the conspiracy against Earth, and Beryaal had somehow discovered that Cation's true purpose here in the outworlds was to uncover that conspiracy, then it was altogether likely that the Silver Spear had been blown up at Beryaal's orders, for the express purpose of disposing of Catton. Men who would dump matter duplicators on a civilized world would hardly draw any ethical line at destroying a space liner to kill one man.

But how would Beryaal have found out Catton's true purpose? Catton had told only one person of his real motive for visiting the outworlds.

He had told Nuuri Gryain.

Was the girl finked with Beryaal? It was hard to believe; but Beryaal had found out about Catton some way, and perhaps Nuuri had sold him the information for purposes of her own. Catton moistened his hps. He was caught up in a net of intrigue, and every alien seemed his enemy just now.

Catton swung round to face Royce.

"Ill have to place you under secrecy restrictions on this matter duplicator business," Catton told him. "If word ever got out that anyone knows about this plot, therell be war in the galaxy overnight."

"Are you going to stand by and let Earth be ruined?" Royce demanded.

"I'm going to do my best to uncover the rest of the plot, once we get out of this damned jungle," Catton said. "But I don't want Earth flying off the handle, and I don't want Morilar or Skorg to realize the secret's out. Give me some time to work, Royce."

"I have important commercial interests at stake in this thing, Catton."

Catton took a deep breath. "I'm cognizant of that. But there's more at stake than your commercial interests, Royce. Will you give me a pledge of silence?"

"Suppose I don't?"

"I'd have to kill you, I guess," Catton said evenly. "But I don't want to have to do that. I don't like killing, and I especially don't like killing Earthmen. But unless I get a guarantee that you'll keep mum about what you've heard tonight, I'll have to make sure you keep mum."

Royce was silent for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "All right," he said finally. "Ill pretend I didn't hear a thing."

"Thanks," Catton said.

Royce turned away and headed toward his tent. After a moment, Catton returned to the sick man's tent. Woukidal was knotted up in a fetal ball, groaning. Catton sat down to wait, in case the Morilaru's delirious ramblings became intelligible again. But they never did. Despite the drugs, Woukidal's fever mounted steadily during the next two hours, until his forehead felt blazing to the touch. He died shortly after midnight without speaking again, and Catton returned to his tent after waking Sadhig, who was scheduled for the first watch that night. He told the Skorg of Woukidal's death. Sadhig merely shrugged. "His pain ended," the Skorg said, and squatted down by the fire.

In the morning they held a brief interment ceremony; the three surviving Morilaru uttered the ritual prayer for the dead, and Royce and Catton lowered the body, shrouded in the fabric of a bubbletent, into the grave that had been prepared. They broke camp immediately afterward and moved on.

There were no further fever attacks on the trip northward. On the seventeenth day, Catton was stung by a tiny golden-green insect, and his left arm balooned grotesquely, swollen with fluid from shoulder to wrist. The pain kept him from doing any work for two days, but the swelling subsided rapidly and there were no aftereffects.

On the twenty-second day, the last of the lifeship food supplies ran out. But by that time nearly half the castaways' diets consisted of native fruits anyway; the fertile jungle yielded dozens of edible fruits, which were tested by the only method possible, the empirical one. The only casualty was Sadhig, who had a day's indigestion after sampling honey-colored berries from a creeping vine. On the twenty-fourth day Catton shot a gentle-eyed, bluish-skinned creature the size of a fawn, and that night they feasted on local venison with no serious digestive consequences.

A broad river blocked their northward route on the thirtieth day. Their boat was gone, and swimming the river was out of the question; instead, they sidetracked to the east for two days until the river became narrow and shallow enough to ford on foot. Royce slipped during the crossing, ruining one of the blasters but causing no damage to himself.

By now the troupe was a bedraggled one indeed. Clothing had long since rotted away to a bare minimum; Catton had sprouted a bushy, startlingly red beard, and Royce a straggly gray one. Sadhig and the Morilaru male, both coming from races which were not afflicted with facial hair, had no such adornments. The women, too, looked seedy and unkempt. They had no nudity taboo, but they were unhappy about the appearance of their uncoiled hair, and so wrapped the remnants of their clothing about their heads to conceal the lack of proper Morilaru hair grooming.

On the thirty-ninth day, Catton announced that they had covered the estimated five hundred miles, and that the beacon should be not too far. They set out to patrol the area. Sadhig built a detector out of equipment that had been taken from the ship, and a day later they came to the rescue beacon, a tower a hundred fifty feet high topped by a subspace communicator antenna whose spokes poked skyward for eighty feet more.

Instructions were posted plainly on the side of the beacon tower in several dozen tongues—not including Terran, of course, since the beacon had been erected long before Terra's entry into interstellar life. Catton read the Morilaru instructions. They were absurdly simple; all he need to do was trip a lever, and an instant-communication beam would go out to the Morilaru space-rescue service. It would be only a day or so before a pickup ship would arrive.

Catton prepared to trip the signal. He heard a sudden shout from Royce and one of the Morilaru women simultaneously, and turned to see what was happening.

Sadhig, a hundred yards away, was casually training his blaster on his temple. The Skorg was smiling. Catton took two steps forward, but there was no time to interrupt the act. Sadhig squeezed the trigger.

They held another funeral that night, while waiting for the rescue ship to arrive. Sadhig had kept faith; he had served well on the long trek to the beacon. But he had forfeited his right to live, in his own eyes, the moment he had entered the lifeship on the doomed Silver Spear. Now, with rescue in sight, he had paid his forfeit.

XII.

A Morilaru ship picked the five survivors up early the next morning. Royce and Carton both decided to continue on to Skorg; the others elected to return to Morilar, where they intended to bring legal action against the spaceliner's owners for negligence. All five were taken to a relay point, a Morilaru-colonized planet called Thyrinn, where Catton and Royce boarded a small passenger vessel bound for Skorg. The trip, which lasted nine days, was uneventful. It Was pleasant to sleep in an air-conditioned cabin again, to shave, to eat regular meals.

Catton had managed to retain his passport and identification through all the vicissitudes of the jungle trek. He presented them now to the authorities at the vast spaceport at Skorgaar, capital city of the Skorg Confederation. The immigration officer, a wiry, basilisk-faced Skorg, examined Carton's papers and returned them with a dour smile.

"According to these you left Morilar more than a month ago. It must have been a slow trip."

"I came via the Silver Spear," Catton said.

The Skorg's eyes widened in surprise. "But—"

Catton nodded. "Yes. I spent forty days wandering a-round on some jungle planet five hundred light-years from

Morilar. But I'm here, finally. My three Morilaru attaches— there's a notation about them on the visa, over here—didn't make it. Two died in the wreck, I imagine, unless they got away in time. The third died in the jungle." "How long do you plan to stay on this world?" "The visa won't expire for a year. I don't have any definite plans," Catton said.

A cab took him to the heart of Skorgaar, and he checked in at a large metropolitan hotel that catered to aliens. Skorgaar was a city of some twelve million people; there were always visitors from other worlds here on commercial trips. Skorg was a large, low-density planet; the gravity, 1.4 Earthnorm, was a bit strong for Carton's comfort, but the climate was cooler than that of Morilar, for which he was grateful. The worlds were generally similar culturally; it was a favorite Morilaru theory that the Skorgs were descended from a pioneer ship of Morilaru spacefarers, thousands of years in the past, and certainly there were enough biological evidences to support the notion. Skorgs were gray in color, in contrast to the Morilaru purple, and their bodies were more elongated, their flesh more sparse. Terran biologists suspected that they were the same common stock—perhaps both descended from some ancient race long since extinct, which had colonized the area in the unimaginable past.

Carton's first official stop on Skorg was at the office of the Terran Ambassador. He was a lean, short, hardbitten little professional diplomat named Bryan, who whooped with surprise when Catton presented his identification.

"They announced that you were lost on the Silver Spear!" Bryan exclaimed. "I got the cable from Morilar weeks ago, from Seeman."

Catton shrugged. "I got away in a lifeship, but I was missing until ten days ago. How many died in the wreck?"

"I think there were about forty survivors, not counting any who may have escaped with you. Three lifeships got away before the ship blew. Four, altogether. Including the crew, close to nine hundred died."

"Nine hundred," Carton repeated softly. Pouin Beryaal had been willing to kill nine hundred people in order to dispose of one Earthman. If they were that anxious to kill him, Catton realized, he was going to have to get about his business swiftly and efficiently.

"I've come to Skorg for official reasons," Catton said. "I'm investigating the hypnojewel traffic as a member of the In-terworld Commission on Crime."

"You think you'll find anything here?"

"I don't know," Catton said. "There've been some hints. I mean to look. But I've got another motive for coming here, besides the official one. You know about Ambassador Seeman's daughter, of course?"

"The bulletin was spread through the entire galaxy," Bryan replied. "The Skorg police have been cooperating to some extent, but there's not much you can do by way of finding one girl in a galaxy of umpteen trillion people. Or even of finding her on a single world."

"I have an idea she may have come to Skorg," Catton said.

"To Skorg? I told you, we've checked. But with nineteen billion people here, it's hard to accomplish much. She could be right under our noses and we wouldn't necessarily find her."

"Maybe 111 be lucky," Catton said.

"Why are you so interested? It's nothing personal, is it? I don't mean to pry, but—"

Chuckling, Catton said, "It's nothing romantic, if that's what you mean. But I think her disappearance has something to do with the hypnojewel business. That's why I'm looking for her."

The next few days were fruitless ones for Catton. He had Bryan arrange- interviews for him with the chiefs of the

Skorg police authorities, but they told him nothing about the hypnojewel trade that he had not already learned by consulting the Commission's files. And, of course, no one knew anything about the whereabouts of the girl. They had searched; but Skorg was a crowded world. Carton got the impression they were not particularly interested in finding her. They seemed to scoff at the idea that she might be on Skorg at all, and suggested that she had fled back to Earth, where she could melt into the billions and never be found.

Carton chafed impatiently. He was getting nowhere. And, he suspected, time was running out.

He was sure that Doveril had abducted her. And Doveril was deeply involved in the hypnojewel trade. Find the girl, find Doveril. But how? Where?

And then there was the business blurted by the dying Morilaru in the jungle. If it were true, if it had not been merely a fever dream, then Earth lay in imminent danger. A few matter duplicators, parachuted down from the skies at random, could crumble a civilization in days. First money, then all material goods would cease to have value. A world might bring order out of the chaos eventually, but in how many centuries?

And Pouin Beryaal was at the heart of the plot, if truth had been told. That was very neat indeed, thought Catton. Pouin was a figure of major importance on Morilar. Merikh eMerikh was an influential Skorg noble. Whether Uruod, the Arenaddin, knew about the scheme or not hardly mattered. Enough strength was mustered against Earth as it was.

Where would they get matter duplicators? No one within the bounds of the accepted galaxy would manufacture them. But perhaps there was some other source, beyond the hu-manoid worlds. Where, Catton wondered? He needed an opening. Only luck would give it to him.

Luck did.

It was his sixth night in Skorgaar. He had been to see the local head of the Crime Commission that day, to find out if anything significant had been uncovered that might give him a wedge toward solution of the hypnojewel problem. No help was forthcoming. Catton found himself far across Skorgaar, in a strange part of the city; it was dinner time, and he chose a restaurant at random.

It was a plush establishment. The waiters were not Skorgs but Chennirids, slim green humanoids from a world subservient to Skorg. The patrons of the restaurant seemed to be largely outworlders on expense accounts—about half Morilaru, with the rest chiefly Arenaddin and Dargonid.

Few native Skorgs were to be seen on the premises. And the menu, when it came, proved to be an exptic one, specializing in Morilaru cookery. Morilaru food ran to the salty side; Catton ordered a vegetable dish of Arenadd instead, and got a respectful bow from the Chennirid waiter.

While he waited for the food he looked around. The decor was Morilaru. Most of the patrons were. And there was even Morilaru music playing—tinkling, graceful music played on that instrument Estil Seeman had been playing that day in the Embassy. What was its name? Ah, yes—the gondran. He saw now that the player was seated at the far end of the restaurant, behind him, on a small dais. With some surprise he noticed that she was an Earthwoman. Then he gasped in shock and half rose out of his seat, nearly knocking a tray of soup from the waiter's hand.

The waiter apologized humbly for his clumsiness. Catton wasn't listening. Currents of amazement pounded in his mind. Talk about needles in haystacks, he thought! What luck! What blind luck!

He took a note pad and stylus from his pocket and printed a note in Morilaru characters, inviting the gondran player to his table when her stint was finished. He called the waiter over, handed him the folded note, and said in Skorg, "Take this to the girl playing in the back. I'd like the pleasure of her company." He gave the man a rip and watched him cross the room to the girl.

She played for ten minutes more, having read his note without breaking the thread of her improvisation. After the final cadence she rose, nodded gracefully in acknowledgment of the polite applause, and came to Carton's table.

It was Estil, all right.

But she was no longer the demure, blushing eighteen-year-old of a few months ago. Carton saw that the moment he saw her eyes. They were woman's eyes. She looked as though she had found out what misery meant.

It was her turn to gasp as she recognized Carton. "You— the Crime Commission man!"

He rose, pulled out a chair for her. "Hello, Estil. I didn't expect to find you so easily."

She sat, staring at him wordlessly. She seemed unable to speak. Carton said after a moment, "Shall I order something for you?"

"No—no. Please. I ate before I went on."

"You played very well."

"I have to play very well. It's my livelihood." Catton raised an eyebrow. "Doveril sends you out to work?"

"I'm—not with Doveril any more," she said in a barely audible voice.

Catton let the point go for a moment. He said, "You've caused quite a stir by your disappearance. There's been a galaxy-wide hunt for you. And you're sitting out in the open for anyone who has eyes to see!"

"They—they haven't seemed to be looking for me for weeks. The first few weeks we were here, Doveril made me stay out of sight. But now it doesn't seem to matter. The Skorg police have forgotten all about me."

Catton said, "You ran away quite suddenly. As I member, you asked me to get you some information—about Doveril. Then, before I had a chance to see you again, you were gone."

Her eyes did not meet his. "Doveril found out what I had asked you to do. He came to me that night, late, and asked if I trusted him. He said he had two tickets for Skorg for a flight two hours after midnight. He—insisted I go with him."

"And you went."

"Yes," she said bitterly. "I went. I suppose you found out about Doveril?"

He nodded. "We rounded up a bunch of his accomplices in the hypnojewel business not long after you left. But Doveril was the kingpin, and Doveril was gone. You say you left him?"

She shook her head sadly. "No. He left me. Three weeks after we arrived on Skorg." "He left you?"

"He lost interest, I guess," she said with a pale smile. "We were really strangers to each other, after all, despite everything. I found a note from him one morning when I woke. I haven't seen him since. But I know where he is."

"He isn't on Skorg any more?"

"He's—somewhere else. I don't want to talk about it here." "Where are you living?"

"There's a hotel, not far from here. I'm registered under another name."

"And how long have you been working at this place?"

"Since Doveril left. It's a Morilaru-owned restaurant. Doveril took me here a couple of times. I asked for a job, and they gave it to me. Playing the gondran is about the only useful trade I picked up, being an ambassador's daughter. I'm afraid I wouldn't be much good at waiting on tables, or something like that." She smiled again—a pale, wan smile. She looked exhausted. "They don't pay me much, but it's enough to keep my rent up to date, and I get most of my meals here."

"Why don't you just notify the authorities? You don't need to work in a restaurant," Carton said. "You could be on your way back to Morilar tonight, if you let someone know you were here."

She shook her head. "I'm afraid to go back. I don't dare face my father, after what I did. Running away, giving myself to an alien—" She tightened her jaws, fighting back tears. "So I've been staying here, frightened of returning, frightened of living on a strange world all alone. I don't know what to do. I've been hoping someone would find me and turn me in—I don't have the strength to do it myself. And I know things. About the hypnojewels, about worse. Doveril talked. But I don't dare tell anyone the things I know."

She looked pitiful, Catton thought. Cast away by her sly lover, afraid to return home, probably living in fear every minute here on Skorg—it was not a pretty picture for a girl who had been raised in the splendor of an ambassadorial mansion.

He looked down at the food on his plate. He was not hungry any more.

"How much longer do you have to stay here tonight?" he asked.

"I have to do one more turn. Ill be through in about an hour."

"Do you trust me, EstilP"

"I—I think so," she said faintly. "It isn't easy to trust anyone, after—after—"

"Believe me, 111 help you. Ill wait for you to finish your stint here. Then I want you to leave here with me and tell me all the things you're afraid to tell me. Nothing's going to happen to you. The worst is over. Will you believe that?"

"111 by."

"Good. Get up there and earn your pay, then. Ill be waiting for you back here."

She returned to the dais. There was a scattered trickle of applause. Catton watched her carefully. She adjusted the height of the seat and, back straight, fingers arched over the keyboard, began to play as if for all the world she were back in the Embassy drawing-room, with her tutor looking on and beaming with pride.

XIII.

The hotel where Estil Seeman was living was almost incredibly dingy. Sputtering argon tubes gave the only illumination in the halls. Her room was nothing more than a cubicle with a bed, a dresser, and a mirror in it. There was a common lavatory at the end of the hall. The rank Skorg odor was everywhere.

Catton quelled his disgust. "How much do you pay for this place?"

"Five normits a week."

The Earthman scowled. His own room, halfway across the city, cost more than that by the day. "How much does the restaurant pay you?"

"Twelve normits a week, plus food at cost," she said tiredly. "I haven't been able to save very much since I've been here."

"I imagine you haven't," Catton said, sitting down in a creaky, deflated pneumochair. He swung around to face her. "All right, Estil. Let's talk. Let's talk about Doveril."

"If you want to."

"The night of your father's ball, when you spoke to me, you said you suspected Doveril was mixed up in hypnojewel trading. How soon was it before you found out definitely that he was?"

"As soon as we landed on Skorg," she said. "He—seemed to change. To grow cold, and hard, and self-confident. Before he seemed, well, almost shy. But all that left him. He started boasting to me."

"About what?"

"About how important he was in the hypnojewel racket, and how rich he was going to get. He told me all this as if he expected me to applaud him."

"Just what does he do to be so important?"

"He's—a courier. He helps distribute the hypnojewels."

Carton's eyes gleamed. "Did you ever leam where the jewels come from in the first place?"

She shook her head. "N-no. He kept that part very mysterious. I never found out."

Catton frowned; he had hoped Estil could give him that vital bit of information. "Will you tell me where Doveril is now?"

"He's on a planet named Vyom," the girl said.

Catton had heard of Vyom only several times; it was a remote world, hundreds of thousands of fight-years from the central lens of the galaxy. And it was not an oxygen-breathing world; as he recalled, it had a chlorine atmosphere. The inhabitants were completely non-humanoid and had litde dealing with that vast majority of peoples that breathed oxygen.

Catton grasped her arm. "Is that where the hypnojewels come from?"

"No." She dropped her eyes. "On Vyom they make matter duplicators. Doveril went there to buy some." "What?"

"I know. It sounds horrible. But one day there was a call from Morilar—from Pouin Beryaal. I listened in, but Doveril didn't know it. And Beryaal told Doveril to leave for Vyorn immediately, to arrange for the shipment of matter duplicators. I don't know what Beryaal is planning to do with a cargo of duplicators, but—"

"I know," Carton said darkly. "He's planning to dump them on Earth."

"No!"

"Beryaal's behind a plot to smash Earth before it gets too powerful in the galactic scheme of things. The way to do it is to drop matter duplicators." Catton's head was beginning to ache. Beryaal was like an octopus, with tentacles wandering everywhere. He ran the Crime Commission, he schemed to shatter Terran civilization, he employed Nuuri Gryain to spy on Catton, he employed Doveril Halligon to obtain the matter duplicators for him, not seeming to care that Doveril was also involved in an illegal traffic which Beryaal was supposedly trying to stamp out. Or was Beryaal bound up in the hypnojewel business too? It would hardly be surprising.

And Nuuri had tried to betray Doveril. Either the right hand knew not what the left was doing, or else the entire incident had been another scheme within a scheme. Catton tried to puzzle out the whole complex plan, without success.

"You look so troubled," Estil said. "What's wrong?"

"I'm trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together. But the puzzle keeps getting more complicated every day." Catton shook his head. "How long ago did Doveril go to Vyorn?"

"Four weeks ago."

Four weeks, Catton thought. He did not remember how long it took to reach Vyom by nullspace drive, but it was certainly several weeks. So Doveril had just arrived there. Catton realized he would have to follow him.

He rose. "It's getting late, Estil. I shouldn't be in a

young lady's hotel room at this hour without a chaperone."

She reddened. "I don't have much reputation left to lose," she said softly.

"If that's a proposition, consider it refused," Catton said, laughing. "I'd never be able to look your father in the eye again."

He walked toward the door. She followed him—a tired litde girl who had grown up too fast, still wearing the tight, low-cut dress that was her costume as a restaurant performer.

"Are you going to go to Vyorn?" she asked.

"Maybe. Ill see you again before I leave Skorg, in any event. Good night, Estil."

"Good night."

The next morning, Catton paid a visit to the travel agency office in the lobby of his hotel. The agent at the desk was a female Skorg of forbidding height, who flashed a professional smile at him—a neat touch, since Skorgs used a hand gesture rather than a mouth gesture to indicate amiability, and it showed her familiarity with Terran customs of courtesy.

He said, "I want to book passage for Vyom on the next ship."

She looked a little surprised. "I'm sorry, sir. There is no through service from Skorg to any planets in the Vyom region."

"You aren't going to tell me that I simply can't get there from here, are you?"

The old Terran joke was lost completely on her. She smiled again, gravely, and said, "Oh, certainly not, sir. I merely said that there was no direct route from Skorg to Vyom, but that should not be taken to mean that no link exists between those worlds."

"I see," Catton said, choking back a grin. "Would you work out a route for me, then?"

She began thumbing through books, consulting timetables, examining maps. Finally she said, "There is a way, sir. But it is a complex one. You would have to take a liner to Thar-rimar—a ten-day trip. There you would make connections with a ship bound for Dirlak, and at Dirlak you would get the passenger ship to Hennim, which is the closest world to Vyom in its own solar system. A shutde runs from Hennim to Vyom."

"And how long will all this take?"

She jotted down figures. "Ten days from Skorg to Tharri-mar . . . then a two-day stopover waiting for the Dirlak trip . . . five days more to Dirlak ... a one-day wait until the ship for Hennim leaves . . . three days from Dirlak to Hennim . . . one more day for the Hennim-Vyom shuttle. A total of twenty-two days from departure to arrival. Will that be acceptable?"

Catton told her that it was, and she arranged a round trip for him which allowed him five days on Vyom. He would depart from Skorg on the Tharrimar bound ship in three days; the agent subradioed ahead to reserve accommodations for him at the various stopover points, and within an hour the packet of tickets and reservations was completed. The cost of the trip was three thousand normits, or twenty-seven hundred thrones in Morilaru currency. He paid out of the funds he had drawn from the local office of the Interworld Commission on Crime.

The arrangements complete, Catton headed across the hotel lobby to the dining room, for lunch. A Skorg bellhop neady stepped in front of him and said, "Are you the Earthman, Catton?"

"That's right."

"A woman from Morilar wishes to see you. She's waiting in the front of the lobby."

Frowning, Catton gave the boy a coin and went forward. A woman from Morilar? Who—

It was Nuuri Gryain.

She was sitting in the lounge chair nearest the lobby door. As he came into view she rose and walked toward him.

"Hello, Catton. I figured I'd find you here."

"Nuuri—what—how come you're on Skorg."

She shrugged. "I took a little trip. There was a reward for the bit of informing I did, and I put my money into a round trip ticket to Skorg. But I'm hungry and thirsty now. Have you eaten?"

"No," Catton said. "I was just about to."

He escorted her toward the hotel dining room. They found an empty table for two.

Catton said, "How did you know I was here?"

"I knew you were on Skorg because it was splashed all over the news-sheets that you'd survived the Silver Spear explosion, had been rescued from a jungle world after weeks and weeks, and had come to Skorg. So I called a few hotels when I landed in Skorgaar, starting at the most expensive and working down. You were registered at the third one I called."

Catton smiled politely at her, but behind the smile was a more cautious expression. He did not know how far to trust the Morilaru girl. He still suspected that she betrayed him to Pouin Beryaal. And a girl who lived on the other side of the river in Dyelleran did not waste her money on pleasure jaunts to Skorg. There had to be a deeper motive for her trip.

A waiter hovered behind his" shoulder. Nuuri said, "Order some wine first, yes?"

"All right. Get us a bottle of something good, waiter. Make it a six-normit bottle."

The waiter bowed low and glided away. A few moments later the wine steward appeared with a faceted green bottle. The sommelier showed the label to Catton for approval. It was in a language he did not know. "Where's it from?" he asked.

"Jammir," said the wine steward with faint supercilious undertones. "One of our finest light wines."

"Very well," Catton said. "Well try it."

Following the ancient custom of his trade, the sommelier unstoppered the decanter, poured a bit of wine into Cartons glass, and waited for a verdict. Catton tasted it. The wine was dry, with a curious flavor of fresh wood smoking over a fire. He liked it. He nodded to the wine steward, who poured out a glass for each of them and restoppered the decanter.

Catton reached for his glass; at the same moment Nuuri, going for hers, knocked her purse to the floor. Automatically Catton bent and scooped it up. Then, cautiously, he thought of glancing at his wineglass. The clear surface of the wine seemed momentarily roiled and clouded; after an instant it returned to its transparent state.

Catton nodded. It was all very neat, very slick, he thought. The accidental knoeking-over of the purse, giving her a moment to drop something in his wine while he bent.

"On Earth," he said in a quiet voice, "it's traditional that when a man and woman dine together, they exchange their wine glasses before drinking. The tradition goes back to the dim past of Terran civilization—it's a symbol of the trust that a man and a woman should have when they share food."

Nuuri's eyes glimmered uneasily. "I don't think it's a very sensible custom."

"But it's a touching one. Let me have your glass, Nuuri, and you take mine."

"Don't be foolish, Catton. Earthman customs don't interest me. Drink your wine."

"Please. It's a particular custom of mine."

"I didn't notice you asking me for my glass when we drank together at the Five Planets," she said.

"We didn't eat afterward," Catton improvised.

"Drink your wine and don't trouble me with your Earthman customs." She raised her glass to her lips. Catton reached across the table, caught her slender wrist between his thumb and middle finger, and forced her hand back to the table. She let go of the wineglass. He did not release his grip on her wrist.

"What's the matter, Nuuri? Are you afraid to drink my wine?"

"You're being silly."

"Answer me. Are you afraid to drink my wine?"

"Of course not. Do you take me for a poisoner? Let go of my arm. I don't intend to sit here and let you accuse me of-"

"You don't think I'll let you storm out of here and escape, do you? Drink the wine. And don't try to spill the drink intentionally." He dug his middle finger into the network of blood vessels that lay just below the skin of her wrist. She gasped involuntarily as the pressure tightened.

"Let go. You're hurting me."

"Tell me why you won't drink my wine, Nuuri." "You're making a scene. I could have the waiter throw you out."

He dug his finger deeper into her wrist. Her fingers were quivering from the pain. "Don't try to raise your voice, Nuuri, or I'll break your wrist," he warned in a level voice. "You put something in my drink while I bent over to pick up your purse."

"No! It isn't so!"

"It must be so. Otherwise you wouldn't have made a fuss about exchanging the drinks."

He tightened his grip. His own fingers were beginning to hurt from the constant pressure; her arm, he thought, was probably numb to the elbow by now. But still he intensified his grasp. She bit her lips to keep from crying out.

"Please ... let go of me."

"I want an answer. You came here to poison me, didn't you? Tell me the truthl Isn't that why you're here? Who sent you?"

"Please." Her voice was a strangled whisper. "My wrist— you're crushing it—"

From a distance, in the crowded dining room, they gave the appearance of an affectionate mixed couple, the man leaning forward and holding the woman's arm. Closer, the picture was different. Catton forced his fingers to contact even further.

"All right," Nuuri gasped finally. "Pouin Beryaal sent me. He was furious when he heard you had survived the ship explosion. He sent me to Skorg to kill youl"

XIV.

Catton casually knocked the glass of poisoned wine to the floor. A moment later Skorg attendants came bustling up to mop the parquet, remove the broken glass, and to assure Catton that they were terribly sorry about the accident.

He and Nuuri finished the meal in silence, Catton never taking his eyes off her. After he signed the check he said quietly, "Okay. Let's go up to my room. We can talk there."

They rode up in the gravshaft together. Catton let her into the room first, locked the door, and said, "Give me your purse." He took it from her and tossed it into the closet, which opened only to the thumbprint of the room's occupant. "You can have it back when you leave," he told her. "I'm not taking any chances with whatever artillery you might have in there."

"How do you know I'm not concealing a blaster in my clothes?"

"I don't. Suppose you strip and let me search them."

She glared at him, more in annoyance than in outrage; Morilaru did not feel modesty about displaying their bodies. She peeled her clothes off sullenly. Her body was like that of the two Morilaru women he had been marooned with: lean, practically without fatty deposits anywhere. He examined her clothing, found no concealed weapons, and told her to dress.

"Are you satisfied?" she asked him.

"Satisfied that there's no way you can kill me right this moment, anyway." He sat down facing her. On Skorg there was no prohibition about non-residents carrying weapons, and he was armed with a small blaster in case she tried anything violent. "So you're working for Pouin Beryaal," he said reflectively. "And-he sent you here to kill me, eh?"

She did not speak.

Catton said, "I suppose you were the one who told Beryaal that my real motive for coming to the outworlds had nothing to do with hypnojewels, too. You told him I was investigating the plot against Earth. And he saw to it that the spaceliner I was taking blew up. You informed on me, didn't you? You were in Beryaal's pay?"

"You're remarkably wise," she said acidly. "But I don't have to listen to you talk. Kill me and be done with it, Catton!"

"Kill you? Not till you've told me what I want to know, Nuuri. Perhaps, if you tell me enough, I'll release you." "I'm not telling you anything."

He steepled his fingers. "One aspect of this tangle puzzles me. You worked for Beryaal. So did Doveril. But you offered to betray him to the crime-detection people, and only the fact that he had run away the night before kept him from being picked up with the others. How come one minion of Beryaal would try to sell another one out? Did the wires get crossed?"

Astonishment registered on Nuuri's face. After a frozen pause she said, "Doveril was working for Beryaal?" "Does this come as news to you?"

"I never knew it. Beryaal must have been furious with me! I offered to betray his underling Doveril to you out of personal motives of revenge."

"Because Doveril jilted you?"

"We lived together for a while. We were planning to take out a permanent residence permit. Then, suddenly, he told me that it was all off, that there was someone else, that I would have to leave. I resolved to punish him for that. I was acting on my own, not Beryaal's designs, when I informed on Doveril."

Catton shook his head slowly. "Doveril was a kingpin in the hypnojewel business, but he was also doing some very important—and illegal—work for Beryaal. And Beryaal was employing you to spy on me."

Nuuri's spiked shoulders slumped. "So it didn't matter that Doveril escaped capture. As head of the Commission, Beryaal would simply have freed him if he had been caught with the others."

"I'm afraid so," Catton said.

"But how do you know so much about Doveril? Where is he? Have you seen him?"

"No. But I've seen the girl he jilted you for. Doveril dumped her too."

"She is here? On Skorg?"

Catton nodded. "The night before I first met you, Doveril eloped with her to Skorg. But he dropped her after a few weeks. She's still living on Skorg, here in Skorgaar."

Anger glinted in Nuuri's eyes. "Who is this woman?"

"Estil Seeman. The daughter of the Terran Ambassador to Morilar. Doveril talked her into running away with him when he saw trouble shaping up for himself. She's living in a cheap hotel on the other side of town, and playing the gondran in a restaurant so she can pay her rent."

Nuuri laughed harshly. "Of coursel He was her music teacher, and she disappeared the same night he ran awayl But I was too stupid to connect them. He's left her, you say? Where is he? On Skorg, too?"

"No. He's out of the system, on some filthy business of Beryaal's."

"You know where he has gone? Tell mel"

"It doesn't concern you," Catton said.

"Anything about Doveril concerns mel Tell mel 111 go there with you, help you capture him—1"

"Hold onl" Catton said. "I'm going to turn you over to Skorg authorities before I leave."

"Nol Let me go with you!"

"After you tried to murder me downstairs? You think I'm going to give you another chance?"

"I have no interest in killing you," she said. "Beryaal ordered me to come here and attempt it, and I obeyed him. But Beryaal means nothing to me. I'm interested only in engineering Doveril's downfall. Let me go to this world with you. Well arrange a trap for him. Doveril may still trust me; 111 lure him to you."

"You'd sell anyone out. How can I trust you?"

'Trust me on faith. I want revenge on Doveril. Nothing else matters to me." She smiled craftily. "Ill make a deal with you, Catton. Take me to wherever Doveril is—and when we find him, I'll tell you where the hypnojewels come from!"

"You know?"

"Doveril once let it slip. I've been saving the information until I could put it to good use. And now I can. Take me to Doveril, let me help capture him—and 111 give you the name of the world where the hypnojewels are made. Is it a deal?"

Catton was silent a long while. The girl was of shifty loyalties; no doubt about that. But how sincere was she now?

She had sold out friends, attempted to murder him, lied and betrayed. By accepting the offer of her help, he might be clutching a viper to his bosom. But, on the other hand, catching the wily Doveril on Vyom might not be easy. Using Nuuri as bait, it would be much simpler for him. And there was the additional handy factor of her offer to give him the hypnojewel information—unless, of course, she was bluffing there.

He decided to risk it. Her hatred for Doveril seemed unfeigned. She was an uncertain ally, but he would take his chances with her.

"All right," he said. "I'm going to Vyom in three days. Can you leave then?"

"Of course."

"Well travel together. 111 include you on my papers as a secretary. There shouldn't be any trouble."

Catton had his doubts about joining forces with a woman who had spied on him and attempted to murder him. But at this stage of the conflict he needed any ally he could get, even a risky one. He did not have much more time, now that Pouin Beryaal knew that he lived.

He phoned down to the travel agency and arranged for a second set of reservations, in Nuuri's name, along with accommodations—separate ones—for her during the stopovers.

That night he visited the restaurant where Estil Seeman played, and told the girl he was leaving soon for Vyom, to apprehend Doveril, and that if he met with success he would stop off and pick her up on his return trip, to take her back to Morilar. He did not mention his meeting with Nuuri to Estil; it might only fan her jealousy.

During the next three days Catton remained in the hotel. He realized that Beryaal might easily have sent more than one agent to dispose of him. Since he had accomplished all he needed to on Skorg, there was no point needlessly exposing himself now. On the third day he and Nuuri journeyed to the spaceport outside Skorgaar, had their papers validated for emigration, and boarded a small 180-passenger ship of the Skorg Line, bound out non-stop to Tharrimar, fifth world of the Tharrim system.

The ten-day voyage dragged hopelessly. The small ship lacked the awesome splendor of the Silver Spear, and Catton spent his time reading, gaming in the lounge, or sleeping. Nuuri was poor company. Her only topic of conversation was the fierce hatred she bore for Doveril, and Catton soon tired of that.

Tharrimar was a medium-sized world populated by loose-skinned red humanoids governed by a Skorg administrator. The meager city near the spaceport held few attractions, and Catton was bothered by the heavy gravitational pull, nearly twice that of Earth. He was not sad when the two-day stopover ended and the ship for Dirlak blasted off.

This ship was even less imposing than the last—half passenger, half freight. But, blessedly, it was only a five-day journey to Dirlak, a bleak place two billion miles from its sun. The temperature never rose above zero on Dirlak. Frozen winds howled all the time, for the twenty Galactic hours Catton and Nuuri were compelled to wait before their ship to Hennim left. Dirlak was a trading outpost of the Skorg Confederation, thinly populated, rarely visited except by transient travelers.

Three days aboard a slow-moving transport ship got them to Hennim, sister world of Vyom. Hennim was an oxygen world, not much larger than Earth but cursed by a fiercely capricious climate. Torrential rain was falling as Catton landed at the spaceport; within an hour, a searing blast of solar radiation was baking the mud that the fields had become.

The natives of Hennim were humanoids, squat and sturdy, who peered quizzically at Catton from oval eyes the color of litde silver buttons. It developed that most of them had never seen a Terran before. A Skorg interpreter informed Catton that less than a hundred Earthmen had ever visited this system; it was too remote to attract Terran industry, and the tourist trade was put off by the difficulties in getting there from any major world of the galactic lens. Of course, there were no diplomatic relations between Earth and any world of this system. When Catton replied that he was going to Vyorn, exclamations of surprises were audible on all sides. No more than a handful of Terran travelers had ever gone to Vyom.

The shuttle left Hennim the next day. Catton and Nuuri were in the oxygen-breathers' section of the vessel, along with several dozen Hennimese and a few Skorgs. Behind a partition, Catton learned, eight Vyomi were traveling, breathing their peculiarly poisonous chlorine atmosphere.

The trip took six hours. Near its conclusion, a Hennimese in crew uniform appeared in the passenger cabin to announce—first in his own language, then in Skorg—that landing would shortly take place. "All oxygen-breathing entities are required to wear breathing-suits for their own protection. Those who are without suits may rent them from the purser."

Catton and Nuuri rented suits, standard medium-size hu-
manoid type, for small sums payable in Skorg currency. Cat-
ton adjusted his to the familiar chemical makeup of Earth's
atmosphere; it was the first time he had breathed it since
the assignment began. _B

Not long after, the planet they sought came into view. It was vaguely circular, swathed in a thick green shroud of chlorine. The shuttle-ship landed with minor difficulties. After the last jolt, the Hennimese purser reappeared to convey the oxygen-breathing passengers through the airlock to the waiting spaceport coach.

Outside, Catton got his first look at Vyorn. Flat, barren land stretched outward to the horizon. The greenish murk hung low overhead. The scenery was utterly alien, totally strange. Within his protective suit, he was comfortable enough—but the temperature outside, he knew, was no more than 250 degrees above Absolute. It was a cold, ugly, forbidding world, alien in every respect.

And here, Catton thought, are produced the matter duplicators designed for the destruction of Terran civilization.

XV.

Three of Carton's allotted five days on Vyom slipped by before he got his first inkling of Doveril's whereabouts.

The Vyomi were of ho help. They refused to give any information. They were remote, unpleasant creatures: the size of a Terran, but unhumanoid in form, with six jointed arms and three legs; their bodies were dead white, waxy in appearance, and their eyes glowered beadily out of protruding triangular sockets. Better than 90 percent of the life-bearing worlds of the universe produced oxygen-breathing creatures; Vyorn was different. Its inhabitants breathed an atmosphere of chlorine and gave off carbon tetrachloride as respiratory waste. The Vyomi plant life broke the carbon tet down into chlorine and complex hydrocarbons, and so the cycle of respiration went on. In every way these beings were different from all others in the galaxy.

The difference was psychological as well as physiological. The Vyomi seemed cosmically indifferent to the ways of the oxygen-breathers who came to their world. There was no organized government on Vyom, nor any legal system. All Vyomi were free to do as they pleased, so long as they brought no harm to a fellow Vyomi.

Catton, via a Skorg interpreter, spoke with the Vyorni who was in charge of the residence compound for oxygen-breathing beings. "Tell him I'm here to find a Morilaru named Doveril Halligon. That it's important for the security and peace of the galaxy that I find him."

The interpreter reeled off a string of harsh, clicking, consonant-heavy words. After a moment the Vyorni replied: three clucking syllables.

The Skorg translated. "He says he doesn't care."

"Tell him it's vital—that I'll pay him for information."

Once again the Skorg spoke, and once again the Vyorni replied—this time with one snapped grunt.

"Well?" Catton said.

"He doesn't want to be paid. He just isn't interested in helping you."

"Tell him I'm a crime-prevention officer! I'm a member of the Interworld Commission."

Shrugging, the Skorg translated. The answer was curt. "This is Vyom," he says. "Oxygen-breathers' law is no good here."

Catton sighed. "Okay. I see I'm not going to get anywhere with him. Maybe you can help me, then. Is there some central registry of immigrants here? Or a Morilaru consulate where I could ask about my man?"

"There's no central registry of any kind here. Nor any consulates. Vyom doesn't enter into diplomatic relations with oxygen-breathing worlds."

Further investigation later got him more of the same. The Vyorni were not interested in cooperating. If oxygen-breathers wanted to come here to do business, they were welcome, but they would not necessarily be treated with warmth. Cat-ton began to understand how this race could so casually manufacture things like matter duplicators. The Vyomi were not motivated by profit or any other typical oxygen-breather motivation. But they derived some sort of satisfaction from seeing their products go forth and harass and confuse the oxygen-breathers who occupied most of the universe's worlds.

Catton began asking questions. He went about it with care, for he did not want word to reach Doveril—if Doveril were still on Vyom—that an Earthman was here, asking questions about him. Catton let Nuuri do most of the actual questioning. There were about twenty Morilaru in the compound, engaged in trade with the Vyorni. She approached them one by one, subdy leading the discussion around to Doveril.

On the third day they got some concrete information at last. Nuuri was talking to an abnormally plump Morilaru named Gudwan Quinak, who ostensibly was on Vyom to deal in furs, but who, Catton privately suspected, was involved with some sort of drug trade. Catton had Nuuri approach him slyly, wheedlingly, and within ten minutes she had him talking.

"He's a drug man, all right," she reported later to Catton. "And he knows Doveril pretty well. He's at another Vyomi city, about two hundred miles from here. According to Quinak, Doveril landed here about a month ago, and let drop a couple of hints that he was involved in something big. Doveril could never resist boasting."

"How do we get to him?"

"Well have to rent a jetsled. There's no public transport between here and there. Vyorni don't travel much, it seems."

They rented the jetsled at an extravagant cost from a knowledgeable, covertly smiling Skorg who had a lpcal concession. The Skorg's beady eyes glinted as Catton paid over the stiff deposit, as if the Skorg itched to make some remark about the relationship between a Terran and a Morilaru woman who were renting a sled together. But the Skorg kept his own counsel, probably afraid of losing the sale.

The sled was well built, a compact bullet-shaped vehicle totally enclosed in duriplast, with keen snow-runners and a triple array of rocket tubes. Catton checked out the mechanical parts of the sled with great care before they left. He knew enough about the Vyorni by now to realize that if their sled broke down somewhere in the frozen wastes, they would be left to rot before anyone came out to rescue them.

They left the residence compound about mid-day, with Vyorn's small yellow sun directly overhead, dimly visible behind the thick atmospheric swath of chlorine. Catton kept the speed at fifty miles an hour; more might be dangerous. There was no road, just a well-worn track through the bleak tundra. Scattered Vyomi settlements fined the route: odd needle-shaped homes, thirty feet high and no more than twelve feet wide at the base, and farmland ploughed by weird swaybacked creatures whose bodies were segmented like crustaceans and whose eyes had a haunting wisdom about them, as if they were the eyes of intelligent beings who had been subjugated by the Vyorni.

The sun had nearly set—Vyom's day lasted only some sixteen Galactic hours—when the sled reached the outskirts of the village that was Catton's destination. They pulled up outside a domed building much like the other residence compound.

"You go inside," Catton ordered. "Find out if Doveril's around. If he is, see if you can get him to come out here.

Nuuri slipped through the exit hatch of the jetsled and trotted toward the compound's airlock. Catton waited in the sled, cradling a small blaster in his hand. Five minutes passed; then Nuuri returned. She was alone.

"Well?"

"He's across town at the spaceport. Supervising a cargo loading."

"Looks like we got here just in time." Catton slapped down the starter switch on the sled, and it shot off down the road.

The spaceport was a small one, a few miles from the compound. Catton saw only three ships—two small shuttles bearing Hennimese insignia, and one larger, unmarked ship that stood by itself at the edge of the field, glinting dull gray in the gathering darkness. A dozen Vyorni were going back and forth between the ship and a nearby cargo shed. They were bearing wooden crates two feet square into the ship. A figure in a spacesuit stood near the open hatch, counting the crates as they entered the ship.

"Should I go over to him?" Nuuri asked anxiously.

"Wait. They've almost finished loading the ship."

The Vyorni made one last trip to the shed, then paused as if waiting for further orders. The figure in the spacesuit seemed to be dismissing them.

The hatch on the gray spaceship closed abruptly. The space-suited figure started to walk off the field, toward the administration building at the edge of the blast area.

"Okay," Catton said. "Go over and talk to him. I'm tuned in on the wavelength of your suit radio."

Nuuri ran across the field. Crouching in the jetsled, Cat-ton heard her cry out: "Doveril! Doverill"

The spacesuited figure halted. "Nuuri? What are you doing here?"

"I—came to see you, Doveril."

"Followed me all the way to Vyorn? How did you know where I was?" Doveril demanded suspiciously. "Who sent you here?"

"Beryaal sent me," she said evenly. "I have a message for you.

"What dealings have you had with Beryaal?" "He employs me," Nuuri said. "Come with me to that jet-sled. I have a message-disk from Beryaal for you, in it." "Ill wait here," Doveril said cautiously. "Go get it."

"No—come with me." "Go get it, I saidl"

Catton, waiting hidden beneath the jetsled seat, caught his breath. Doveril suspected a trap. The former music teacher was a wary one.

Nuuri came to the jetsled alone. Bending over Catton, she cut her radio and touched her helmet to his to say, "Give me a weapon. He won't come."

Catton handed her his auxiliary blaster. "Here. But don't use it. I want him alive."

She took the weapon without replying, and returned to Doveril. Catton picked up the words over his suit radio.

"Here's the message, Doveril." She extended her space-gloved hand. The gun's nozzle protruded. "Your schemes are finished. I know about the Earthgirl, Estil. I know how you treated her, and how you treated me. This is the time for vengeance, Doveril."

"Nuuri? Are you crazy? You—"

A sudden purple spear of light flashed from the blaster in Nuuri's hand. But Doveril had already launched himself forward as if to tackle her. The energy bolt went wild, passing over the Morilaru's shoulder and dissipating itself harmlessly in the atmosphere. Before Nuuri had a chance to fire again, Doveril was upon her, hurling her to the ground, his hand grasping for the blaster she still clutched.

Catton scowled. The girl had disobeyed him! He flipped up the jetsled's exit hatch and ran toward the struggling pair as they grappled on the frozen field.

Nuuri was screaming hysterically, blanketing the audio channel with her outpouring of hatred. But Doveril's hand grasped the wrist that controlled the blaster, and she could not fire. Catton was still twenty yards away from them when Doveril pounced on the blaster, ripping it from the girl's hand, and leaped back, dragging Nuuri in front of him as a shield.

"Put down your gun, Earthman, or 111 kill the girl," Doveril said evenly.

They faced each other over a twenty yard gap, with Nuuri between them. Catton felt naked and unprotected. If Doveril chose to fire, he could kill the Earthman easily.

But Doveril was backing away, toward the ship. Catton saw the Morilaru's lips moving, but Doveril was talking on another audio channel. Nuuri shouted, "I can hear him, Catton! He's ordering the crew to ready the ship for blastoff! Kill him, Catton! Kill him!"

Catton tensed. Doveril said, "You'll kill her too, Earth-man."

"I don't want to loll anybody. I want to stop that ship from blasting off."

Doveril laughed mockingly. "Of course you do. But I'm afraid that's impossible."

Catton weighed the chances. Doveril was no more than forty feet from the ship's open airlock. The Vyorni who had loaded the cargo were standing in a row at the edge of the field, showing no interest in what was taking place.

Doveril was close to the airlock now. Suddenly Nuuri squirmed in his grasp, twisted round, pummelled with both gloved hands on his helmet as if trying to break it. Momentarily confused, Doveril shoved her away from him.

Catton fired, but the shot went wild. A microsecond later Doveril's blaster spouted energy too. But Nuuri, launching herself at Doveril in a frenzied attack, caught Doveril's beam and was hurled to one side by the energy bolt. Catton fired again quickly. The second bolt caught Doveril at the waist and ripped open his breathing-suit, cutting a flaming hole through the middle of his body. The Morilaru screamed.

Catton ran forward and knelt over Nuuri. The bolt had ripped her suit open at the shoulder. She was still alive. "Did you . . . kill . . . him?" she asked feebly.

"Yes."

"Good. Thanks, Earthman." She started to close her eyes. He grabbed her. "Nuuri! The hypnojewel secret—tell me!"

She giggled hysterically. "They're made on Skorg, Earth-man. I . . . took you a litde out of your way, didn't I? Too bad."

She was dead. The airlock of the waiting ship slammed shut. The warning gong that was the clear-the-field signal sounded. He ran from the field. The ship was blasting off.

Unconcerned Vyorni were standing idly by in the spaceport's administration building. Catton gestured with drawn blaster to a Skorg. "Do you speak Vyorni?"

"Yes."

"Take me to the control center."

At blaster-point, the Skorg did not stop to argue. He led Catton down a corridor to a gravlift, then up to the top of the building. They burst into a central monitoring tower. Three Vyorni peered quizzically at Catton as he entered.

He glanced at the viewscreen that monitored the field. The ship outside had retracted its atmosphere fins, and landing jacks. In a moment it would be blasting off. Catton snapped to the Skorg, "Tell them that they mustn't let that gray ship blast off. That they must withdraw clearance and immobilize its controls."

A simple radiolock was all that would be needed to freeze the ship. The Skorg obediendy translated Carton's order and drew a blunt, brief reply from the Vyorni. "They refuse to do it," the Skorg said. "They won't get involved in other beings' private quarrels."

"But this isn't private! Do you know what's aboard that ship? If—" Catton scowled. He waved the blaster fiercely at the emotionless Vyomi. "Tell him 111 kill them if they don't freeze that ship," he said to the Skorg.

"They won't listen to you," the Skorg said.

The Skorg seemed to be right. The Vyorni did not fear his blaster. And now it was too late to do anything. On the field, the ship was rising, incinerating the bodies of Nuuri and Doveril in its rocket-blast. An instant later the ship lurched upward and out of sight—bearing its deadly cargo of matter duplicators intended for Earth.

XVI.

By the time, two hours later, that Catton had finished ransacking Doveril's quarters at the residence compound, night had fallen. Catton did not trust himself to make the two hundred mile journey safely during the night. He slept over in the dead man's bed, and left early the following morning.

There was no inquiry, no question raised by the Vyorni. Oxygen-breathers could evidently kill each other with impunity on Vyom without arousing curiosity.

Catton was not happy over the way his pursuit of Doveril had ended. Nuuri, who might have been useful again, was dead; and Doveril, whom Catton had hoped to capture alive, was dead as well. Hardly a molecule of their bodies had survived the holocaust of the rockets. Nuuri had tricked him; she had not wanted to help him capture her faithless Doveril, merely to get herself to wherever Doveril was and exact her vengeance. Catton wondered about her last statement—that the hypnojewels were made on Skorg. Another of her lies? A deathbed fantasy? Or was it the truth, and had she deliberately led him away from Skorg to hunt down Doveril?

Worst of all, the cargo ship had escaped. Documents he found in Doveril's room told him that the ship contained a cargo of one thousand matter duplicators, built on Vyom. No doubt it was simple to build the duplicators; all you needed were two pilot models, and the rest could be made by self-duplication. They were being shipped to Morilar, and from there to Earth. The trip to Morilar would take the freighter almost a month, which meant that Catton would arrive there about the same time as the cargo ship. And then—

And then would come the moment of crisis. Catton knew he had to intercept that ship before it left for Earth. Once it became lost in the infinite expanse of nullspace, there would be small chance of tracking it. The matter duplicators would get safely through to Earth. And one day, between one dawn and the next, a thousand crates would drift down through Earth's atmosphere, a thousand matter duplicators would land.

Perhaps half would be destroyed on landing—would fall into oceans, or crash on inaccessible mountain peaks. But if only a hundred—fifty—twenty, got into the hands of men shrewd enough to realize the value of the device and greedy enough not to care about its dangers, Beryaal's plot would have succeeded.

Catton knew he was entirely on his own now. There would be no help from the Interworld Commission of Crime, where Beryaal ruled supreme. Relaying a warning to Earth was risky; it might be intercepted, since subradio beams were easily detected, and in any event he did not want word of the plot indiscriminately spread about the galaxy.

He rode back alone through the windswept wastelands. The Skorg he had rented the jetsled from made an oblique remark about his lady companion not returning with him; Catton merely glared as he received back his deposit. The Vyom-Hennim shuttle departed early the following morning, with Catton aboard. Six hours later, he was on Hennim; later the same night he blasted off for Dirlak on an ancient transport ship.

The trip back to Skorg seemed to take forever. From Dir-lak to Tharrimar, from Tharrimar, finally, to Skorg. Catton touched down on Skorg on the eighteenth day after leaving Vyom; the return trip had been shorter than the voyage out. The vessel bearing the matter duplicators was still more than a week away from Morilar, according to the flight plans in Doveril's papers.

Catton went immediately to Estil Seeman's hotel. The Earthgirl seemed surprised to see him. She kept the door half closed, as if concealing someone within.

"Oh—you're back."

"Yes. Can I come in?"

"I'd—rather you didn't. I—have company—"

Catton ignored her and pushed the door open. There was a slim Morilaru in the far comer, just beginning to draw a knife. Catton pressed forward, slapped the knife out of the Morilaru's hand, and knocked the man tumbling to the floor. Then his eyes widened in recognition.

"You—you're Connimor Cleeren, Doveril's friend!"

The Morilaru nodded. Catton said, "You were tortured to death by Beryaal. He said so!"

The Morilaru shrugged. Catton grabbed him by one pipe-stem arm and yanked him up. To Estil he said, "What's this doing here?"

"He—he saw me at the restaurant," the girl said in confusion. "He was Doveril's friend, and he wanted to talk to me." The Morilaru quivered with fright. Catton said, "Beryaal secretly released you, didn't he?"

Gonnimor Cleeren made no answer. Catton was too tired for toying with the alien. He slapped him, hard, twice in quick succession. "Yes," Cleeren mumbled. "He let me go after the arrest."

"And why are you on Skorg now? What do you want here?"

The alien was silent once again. "Lock the door," Catton said to Estil. "And turn your back."

"What are you going to do to him?"

"Never mind," he snapped. The girl obeyed him. Catton seized the terrified Morilaru by the throat and said quietly,

"I'm going to give you sixty seconds to start telling me all you know about Beryaal and hypnojewels. Then I'm going to put out your eyes with my thumbs."

"Barbarianl"

"That's right," Catton said easily. "Too much is at stake to waste time now. Talk whenever you're ready." He eyed his watch. The alien remained silent for thirty seconds, forty, fifty. Catton put his fingers to the Morilaru's eyes and gendy exerted pressure.

"Nol No!" Cleeren screamed.

"All right. Talk, then."

"What do you want to know?"

"Where are the hypnojewels made?"

"Here on Skorg," Cleeren whimpered. "There's a factory outside Skorgaar. On the outside it seems to be making toys. The police leave it alone."

"How are the jewels made?"

"They're assembled by machinery. It's a complicated process—tremendous heat, great pressure. I don't understand it."

"And who heads the outfit?"

Cleeren was silent again. Catton raised his thumbs and the alien said, "No! Don't! It's—Beryaal and eMerikh. They run the whole hypnojewel show. And they suppress any evidence that might unmask them, since they're on the Crime Commission too."

"Very neat," Catton commented. It tied in with what he had been told by Nuuri. "Beryaal has it all dovetailed nicely. I suppose he used the profits from the hypnojewels to pay the Vyomi for the matter-duplicators."

"No," Cleeren offered. "He paid the Vyorni with hypno-jewels themselves." "What?"

"Hypnojewels can't be duplicated on a matter duplicator; there's something about the submolecular structure that makes it impossible. They're unique that way. And the Vyorni covet hypnojewels—they use them for entertainment and decoration, since the jewels don't affect them very seriously."

Catton nodded. He knew all he needed to know, now. It tied up into a neat whole. Beryaal and eMerikh running both the hypnojewel racket and the investigating committee; hypnojewels going to Vyorn to pay for the duplicators; a cargo on its way with menace for Earth.

He felt drenched with sweat. For one ghastly moment it had seemed that Cleeren intended to call his bluff. It wouldn't have been fun, gouging out the alien's eyes.

He said to Estil, "All right. You can turn around now. I'm not going to hurt him."

The girl was pale. "D-did you find Doveril on Vyorn?"

Catton nodded. "He's dead. There was a gunfight and I killed him."

"Dead?" she repeated distandy.

"You don't feel sorry about it, do you?"

"I—I loved him once," she said. She looked troubled. Catton shook his head.

"Never mind Doveril now. Start packing. I'm going to drop our friend here off at the local jail, and then you and I are going to go to Skorgaar spaceport. We're leaving for Morilar on the first ship out tonight."

The trip took eight days. According to Carton's figuring, the cargo ship from Vyom would reach Morilar a day after he would. Delicate timing would be necessary.

The girl was terrified of the reception she would get at home. Catton reassured her. "Your father can be manipulated —you know that yourself. Well tell him you were abducted and that the note you left was dictated by Doveril. Hell believe you."

On the eighth day the ship entered landing orbit around Morilar. At the spaceport Catton phoned the Embassy and arranged for a car to pick them up, not telling anyone that the girl was with him. Reaching the Embassy, he led her quickly to the Ambassador's office, and made her wait in the hall, away from the beam of the scanning field.

The Ambassador looked like his own ghost. His huge frame had shed perhaps thirty pounds. His face was pale, his skin sagging loosely into pouches where the fat had dissolved away, his eyes weary and sad. He had taken Esal's disappearance badly.

"I thought we were never going to see you again," Seeman said. "After that terrible spaceship disaster—for weeks we thought you'd been killed. And then word came that you had escaped after all—"

"Does Earth know I'm alive?"

"Of course. We sent a message when your ship was reported missing, and another when you turned up safe."

"Have I missed anything important in the last three months?"

The Ambassador shrugged. "Not much. Things have remained about the same since you left."

Catton smiled. "Not entirely. I've got a surprise for you, Ambassador Seeman. Will you excuse me for a moment?" He ducked out of the office. Estil was waiting in the hall with a pinched, nervous look on her face. "Go inside," Catton told her. "He isn't expecting you, so be prepared to shock him."

"You didn't tell him anything?"

"Just that I had a surprise for him. Nothing more. Remember: Doveril kidnapped you. He made you write that note. Got it?"

"Aren't you coming in with me?"

Catton shook his head. "I don't belong in there. And I don't want to be around when the weeping and wailing starts. I don't like to watch a man the size of your father cry.

The girl smiled shyly at him. She stood hesitating at the edge of the green scanner-field that registered on the screen inside the Ambassador's office. Catton gave her a blunt shove into the field. Then, quickly, he turned and strode away, up the stairs to his own room on the fifth floor.

It was late in the afternoon. Tomorrow, probably around noon, the cargo ship would be docking at the spaceport outside Dyelleran. The ship wouldn't remain in port long-no longer than necessary for Beryaal or one of his agents to verify the nature of the cargo and send it on its way to Earth.

Catton saw he was in an ambiguous position. As a member of the Interworld Commission on Crime, he had a legal right to inspect the cargo of any ship entering or leaving Morilar. But Beryaal, as chairman of the Commission, could overrule him. Most likely Beryaal would take precautions to keep any spaceport officials from snooping into that ship's cargo.

Catton reached for the phone, punched out the number of Dyelleran Spaceport, and asked to speak to the supervisor of customs inspection. Ten minutes and three sub-supervisors later, the lean face of an elderly Morilaru appeared on the screen.

"Yes?"

"Lloyd Catton speaking—of the Interworld Commission on Crime. Can you give me a list of the cargo ships due to arrive at Dyelleran tomorrow?"

"All of them?"

"I'm interested in a particular one that's probably coming in with an unregistered planet of departure. Or else it's registered as coming from Vyorn."

"Vyorn? Not very likely. Hold it-Ill check."

The screen blanked for a moment. Then the customs official reappeared. "No, no ships coming in from Vyom tomorrow, sir. There isn't much traffic between Vyorn and Morilar, you see."

"I know," Catton said impatientiy. "Are any ships landing with unregistered planets of departure"

The official ran his eye down a list outside the field of the visual pickup. "Ah—yes. One ship, due in at eight minutes past noon. Doesn't give planet of departure, simply says it's from the Rullimon Cluster. Might be your ship from Vyorn, sir—Vyom's in that Cluster."

Catton nodded. By law, an incoming ship did not have to register its planet of departure prior to customs inspection; it merely had to indicate the galaxy from which it came. He would have to chance it. This ship was probably the one.

"Ill be at the spaceport tomorrow to conduct a personal inspection of that ship's cargo," Catton said. "I don't want any of your men going aboard till I've looked the ship over."

"Yes, sir."

"And if I'm late, impound the ship and hold its crew for questioning. I suspect it's running contraband. Ill have further instructions for you tomorrow."

Carton left the Embassy early the next morning and had himself driven to the spaceport in an official car. The morning papers were splashed with the story of EstQ See-man's return. Her overjoyed father had released the kidnap story, but with few accompanying details. Details, thought Catton, might expose the holes in the story.

Shortly before noon Catton reached the spaceport. The ship from Vyorn would arrive in a few minutes. He went immediately to the office of Erwal Kriuin, Supervisor of Customs Inspection at the big spaceport. Kriuin looked a little surprised to see him. "Oh—Commissioner Catton. I didn't think you'd be coming out here."

"Why not? I told you yesterday I'd be here at noon to inspect that incoming cargo."

"Yes, of course, but I thought the later instructions from Commissioner Beryaal cancelled that arrangement, and—"

"What later instructions from Beryaal?"

The Morilaru looked bewildered. "Right after you called, he phoned me to find out about the same ship. I told him you had already made plans to inspect it, and when I said that he said never mind, that he was going to take care of the job himself. And since he's chairman of the Commission, I thought that you wouldn't be coining out here today, and—"

Catton nodded, cutting off the voluble flow. "There's been a mixup, I see. Is Beryaal here yet?"

"Yes, sir. He's on the field waiting for the ship to land."

"Which will be when?"

Kriuin glanced at a wall clock. "Six minutes, Commissioner Catton."

"Is Beryaal alone?"

"He has a group of men with him, sir. But he ordered me to keep my inspectors away from the ship until he was finished looking at it."

Carton's face darkened. No doubt the group with Beryaal was the special crew that would take the cargo of matter duplicators on to Earth. Beryaal's plan seemed simple e-nough: he would check the cargo to make sure all was well, supervise the changing of crews, and send the ship off again with his blessing. No mere customs inspector would dare to protest once Pouin Beryaal himself had okayed a cargo for transit.

A showdown with Beryaal was inevitable. The wily Morilaru had so thoroughly embedded himself in positions of trust that defeating him might be close to impossible. But Catton had to try. For Earth's sake.

"Get me a hand camera," Catton ordered suddenly.

Kriuin burrowed into a closet and produced one of the pistol-sized closed-circuit video cameras used in customs work. When a customs inspector went aboard a ship, he carried one of the little cameras, which he trained on any item of interest in the cargo hold. It not only broadcast the image to a special screen in the customs office, where other officials could take note of it, but also piped the image into a video taper which made a permanent record of the inspection for use in later inquiry.

Casually Catton opened the camera and detached the micro-miniaturized phosphor-coated "eye" that was the core of the instrument. He slipped the "eye" into his jacket pocket.

Kriuin said tactfully, "You understand, sir, that the instrument will not function unless the perceptor tube is in place—"

"Of course I realize that," Catton said irritably. He did not want the camera to function. He wanted to avoid creating any permanent record of the scene that would take place inside the cargo ship—but he intended that Beryaal and his men would think that such a record was being made.

A few minutes later, field warning signals began to wail. The ship was landing. An area was cleared on the field and the dull-gray ship that Catton had last seen rising from the spaceport on Vyom now descended on a fiery tail of jet exhaust. It came to rest in the middle of its clearing. The decontaminating squad came scurrying out to swab down the landing area.

After five minutes the ship's hatch opened and the crew of eight came down the catwalk, one after another, while nine other figures walked out onto the field. Catton recognized the figure in the lead. It was the immensely tall, dominating figure of Pouin Beryaal.

Catton fretted a few impatient minutes more. Then, as Customs Supervisor Kriuin goggled in utter confusion, Catton carefully checked the charge units of his blaster, smiled at the customs official, and left the office. He trotted downstairs and out to the main approach to the field.

A Morilaru guard stared inquisitively at him. Catton flashed his Crime Commission credentials. "I'm inspecting that ship."

"Of course, sir." The guard stepped complacently aside.

The five hundred yard walk to the ship seemed endless. At last Catton reached the entry hatch. He climbed up, hand over hand, and hauled himself into the open lip of the freighter. Beryaal's crewmen, standing around uncertainly, frowned at Catton as he came aboard.

"What is it, Earthman?" asked a big, rough-looking Morilaru.

"I'm inspecting the cargo. Anyone want to see my credentials?"

"Inspection won't be necessary, Catton," said a familiar voice. Pouin Beryaal strode out of the shadows at the rear of the cabin. The Morilaru's brooding eyes glared daggers at Catton. "I'm handling inspection in here myself, Catton. I thought I left word at the customs office that you didn't have to bother coming aboard."

Catton smiled to mask his inner tension. "I thought I'd help you look around, Beryaal."

"I don't need any help."

The Earthman let the hand-camera become visible, projecting from his clenched left fist. He flashed it around, then centered it on Beryaal. "Surely," Catton said quietly, "you don't have any objection to letting me examine the cargo—just for the record?"

Facial muscles bunched and knotted in Beryaal's cheeks. The big Morilaru seemed to sizzle inwardly. Thanks to the camera, Beryaal was in an awkward position. If everything were being monitored and taped in the customs office, then Beryaal could not in good faith deny Catton the right to examine the cargo without subjecting himself to embarrassing inquiries later. And once Catton succeeded in filming the cargo, everything was lost.

Beryaal growled, "This is a special cargo. Put your camera away and well inspect it together."

"Why can't I use the camera?"

"Because this is a matter of Commission security. If you. videocast this back to the customs office, it'll be whispered all over the port in ten minutes, I insist on security."

Now it was Carton's rum to sweat. Beryaal had a valid point there. But if Catton surrendered the camera, and Beryaal signalled the crew to jump him—

He had to risk it. He made an ostentatious show of clicking the camera off and putting it in his pocket.

"Come," Beryaal said. "I'll take you down to the cargo hold."

They rode down in the creaking elevator together. As it reached bottom Beryaal muttered, "You inquisitive idiot, do you think I'm going to let you get out of this ship alive?"

"Threatening a fellow Commissioner?" Catton said with false innocence. "Why, whatever for, Beryaal?"

Beryaal let his torch glint on the rows upon rows of crates stacked in the hold. Hundreds of crates, each holding a matter duplicator. Catton heard the elevator creaking behind them, on its way back up. Probably Beryaal had already given the ambush signal. The crewmen would descend, attacking him in the darkness of the cargo hold.

Beryaal chuckled. "You think there are hypnojewels in these crates, eh, Catton?"

"Not at all," the Earthman said levelly, "I wouldn't be risking my life over some hypnojewels, and you know it. You've got a thousand matter duplicators aboard this ship. Your henchman Doveril went to Vyorn and paid for them with hypnojewels—just before I killed him."

Beryaal gasped. "What—you know?"

"Yes. I know." The elevator creaked again, descending, bringing with it Beryaal's hand-picked crew. Had Beryaal trusted them with the secret, Catton wondered? That was the all-important information he needed.

The Earthman stooped, picked up the nearest crate, and ripped its seal open. Beryaal tried to interfere, but he was too late. Catton yanked off the top of the crate. Within, cushioned in layer on layer of shock-absorbent plastic, was a small, exquisitely machined device. Catton felt a chill as he looked on a matter duplicator for the first time.

"Get him," Beryaal murmured.

The Earthman straightened instantly and yanked the hand-camera from his pocket. The crewmen, armed with heavy cargo-pins, were about to charge.

"Hold it," Catton snapped. "This thing in my hand is a camera. It's sending a film back to the customs office outside. And if you touch me, itll be valid evidence of who my murderers are."

"Don't believe him," Beryaal said coldly. "I order you to attack!"

But the crewmen continued to hang back. Catton grasped at their moment of indecision. "He's just trying to get you in trouble," the Earthman said. "He wants you to jump me with the camera going. But he doesn't care about you. You know what kind of cargo you're carrying?" He seized the matter duplicator and held it up. "You know what this is? It's a matter duplicator! You're supposed to dump them on Earth. But it's death to deal in duplicators—death on any world! And that's the stuff your boss is paying you to carry!"

Beryaal uttered a strangled cry of rage. He lashed out, knocking the camera from Carton's hand. The crewmen milled about in confusion. Evidentiy Beryaal had handed them some cock-and-bull story about the cargo; they had had no real idea they were carrying anything as risky as matter duplicators.

Catton went for his blaster, but Beryaal leaped, knocking the blaster skittering back behind a heap of crates. The Morilaru was panting with anger and frustration. His long spidery arms reached out to encircle Catton, to hug him tight.

The Morilaru was four inches taller than Catton, but he was thin and fleshless, weighing no more than the Earth-man and perhaps less. Carton's fists pummelled desperately into Beryaal's body midsection. Beryaal gasped, gave ground. His claw-tipped fingers reached for Catton's eyes. The Earthman writhed out of the way in time, charged forward, smashed Beryaal heavily back against the bulkhead.

Beryaal screamed for help. But the crewmen simply stared at the contestants without moving. Catton's fists hammered Beryaal's thin body. The Earthman reached up, seized Beryaal's throat, tightened. He crashed the Morilaru hard against the bulkhead again. Shoulder-spikes splintered. Beryaal howled.

Suddenly he broke loose. He darted into the midst of the crewmen and snatched up a fire-hatchet. He swung it down in an immense arc; Catron sidestepped, clubbed down with his fist on the back of Beryaal's head. The Morilaru dropped. Catton seized the hatchet just as Beryaal struggled to his feet and charged.

Catton swung the blade in a short chopping curve. Beryaal ran full tilt into it. Purple gouts of blood spurted from the Morilaru's chest. Beryaal plunged face-down into the pile of crates and lay there.

Catton sucked in breath and said, "Which one of you is the navigator of this ship?"

"I am," answered a lean, muscular Morilaru.

"Good. You wait here." To the others Catton said, "The rest of you get out of the ship and report to the spaceport police." Catton picked up the fallen camera, activated it by inserting the "eye," and flashed it on the crewmen. "I'm sending these men outside. Have they picked up and held," he said to the listening customs officials.

He clicked the camera off. The men sullenly herded into the elevator, rode upward to the hatch, and filed out of the ship. Catton said to the terrified navigator, "You know how to compute an automatic-wave orbit?"

"Of course."

"Good. Get into the control room and compute an orbit that will take this ship right into the sun." "What?"

"You heard me. Don't worry—neither of us will be aboard when the ship blasts off."

Catton shepherded the man into the control room and watched him as he set up the sunward orbit. Catton made the man run a visual check on the orbitscope. It phased out perfecdy, showing a trajectory that curved in one grand sweep into Morilar's sun. "Good. Now radio the control tower for blastoff clearance," Catton commanded.

This was, he knew, the best way to resolve the situation. Destroying the evidence was justifiable when the evidence consisted of matter duplicators. The entire mission, after all, had been unofficial. And this way, at least, the duplicators would be destroyed. The deadly cargo would fall neither into Terran nor alien hands, and that was just as well. A commercial society could not endure the existence of matter duplicators.

Clearance came. "Come on," Catton ordered. "Activate the autopilot and let's get out of here."

They trotted across the field to safety while the seconds ticked away. He still had a little work to do, he thought. The detained crewmen would have to undergo a mnemonic erasure. And he would have to say goodbye to Estil and her father.

Then he could return to Earth and file his report. Present danger averted—but enemies still existed. No formal complaint would be lodged by Earth. The crisis had been solved unofficially. But with Beryaal no longer obstructing justice, it would be possible to seize subtly the illicit hypno-jewel factory on Skorg; the Skorg government could not afford the galactic ill will it would risk by refusing to crack down. And, just as subdy, an espionage net would tighten around Vyorn, to prevent any further exports of matter duplicators or other dangerous contrivances. But Earth would have to remain on guard against the Beryaals and eMerikhs who plotted her downfall. Which meant plenty of future employment for Catton.

A booming roar split the silence behind him. Catton turned,

shading his eyes against the fury of the rocket blast. The cargo ship rose from the field, hovered a moment, then soared upward, carrying its freight and its one dead passenger on a smooth arc toward the blazing yellow sun of Morilar. Catton smiled to himself. The mission was over.

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recommends these exciting new volumes:

D-295 BIG PLANET by Jack Vance

"Ceaselessly inventive and entertaining." —Boucher and SLAVES OF THE KLAU by Jack Vance It was always open season on escaped Earthlings.

D-303 WAR OF THE WING-MEN by Poul Anderson Marooned on a lethal planet. and THE SNOWS OF GANYMEDE

by Poul Anderson

They'd pattern this world to fit the people.

D-315 THE SPACE WILLIES by Eric Frank Russell You just can't keep on Earthman down! and SIX WORLDS YONDER by Eric Frank Russell Stories of first landings on far planets.

D-322 THE BLUE ATOM by Robert Moore Williams Who controls it, controls all. and THE VOID BEYOND

by Robert Moore Williams Amazing tales of future super-science.

D-277 CITY ON THE MOON by Murray Leinster A novel of the first lunar colonists, and MEN ON THE MOON

Edited by Donald A. Wollheim

A new anthology of lunar exploration.

35?!

If not available at your newsdealer, any of these books may be bought by sending 35# (plus 5# handling fee) for each number to Ace Books, Inc., (Sales Dept.), 23 W. 47th St., New York 36, N.Y.

Order by book number