IX

The crater walls had been moderately magnetized with a thin coating of

metallic spray, and Kane walked before his captor down their sloping

incline with greater ease than he had been able to negotiate the

planetoid's natural surface. He hesitated as the crater bottom suddenly

began to yawn slowly open, and there was the prodding in his back again.

"Keep moving, mister. There's a ladder, and you're first!"

Kane moved carefully, looked over the smooth lip of the now fully

opened shaft. The ladder was a thin, tubular affair with narrow rungs.

He dropped to his knees, swung one leg over; held with his elbows,

groped with the other foot for the next lower rung. Then felt with one

hand, found the top rung, and started down.

"I can't cover you on the way down," the man above him said. "But I

have a fresh supply of oxygen, and I don't think you have. And I've got

both guns!"

The shaft closed silently above them, and then there was sudden

illumination, and Jon blinked after the half-light of the bleak world

outside. The folds of his suit began to feel loose, and he knew that

the shaft must also function as an air lock, and was cycling up to

pressure as they descended.

When they at length reached bottom, his captor gestured at him with a

hand weapon.

"Get your suit off. It stays with me. Whether you get it back again or

not'll be up to you. Move!"

Jon fumbled with unfamiliarly placed dogs and buckles, then surrendered

the suit, and took deep lungsfull of air.

"Where now?" But the other couldn't hear. His helmet was still in

place, and Jon knew that whoever wanted him wasn't taking any more

chances than necessary. But as if in answer to his question, a concave

panel in the shaft wall was suddenly sliding open, and the stockily

built man who stepped in it covered him almost casually with a strange

looking two-handed weapon. He signaled to the other, then looked at Jon

as if noticing him for the first time.

He stepped aside, motioned toward the open panel with the ugly snout of

the gun he carried. "After you, mister. And step along. You've kept the

boss-man waiting a little!"

Both men had spoken in the language of Terra, yet it sounded strangely

distorted to Jon. He had known the language almost all his life, but

his father had taught him the words as they were said in a part of

the planet that had once been called Vermont, and he noticed an odd

difference in the other's speech. He wondered, idly, if any of them

spoke the Universal. But at least, now, he knew who they were. Solmen

of Earth, who had somehow learned to build space ships and weapons; who

had somehow escaped the alert eye of Earth's Tinker spies. But he did

not feel the surprise he had expected. There were legends about the men

of Earth.

The heavy footfalls of the stocky, heavily muscled man behind him

echoed hollowly in the narrow corridor. The passageway curved gently,

sloping downward, then came to an abrupt end.

"Turn to your right."

He did, and a panel similar to the first was opening for him. He

stepped through it, and his second captor followed.

"O.K., hold it."

They were in a compact room, and it was not empty. There were about

ten men in it, Jon estimated at first glance, all similarly dressed

in the green leatheroid coveralls that his captors wore, and barren

of any insignia of rank. They looked up from their places around the

paper-littered conference table, and a big man at its head half rose

from his chair.

"Haine! I thought I told you--oh, is this the man?"

"Darwin be with us, sir, it is."

The big man's face changed expression quickly. He resumed his seat, and

suddenly the room was quiet, and others were turning in their chairs,

fixing Jon with their eyes. The big man gave no signal for him to be

seated in one of the empty chairs, but spoke to him as though he had

been placed under arrest.

"You are Kane? The Tinkerman arrested on Titan?"

"I am," Jon answered, trying to keep self confidence strong in his

voice. "But I don't--"

"Just answer my questions, Master Kane. My name is Stine--Martin Stine.

On Earth I'm a Senator. My men got you out of the lockup on Titan.

Apparently you and the Tinkerwoman escaped them afterward--"

"I don't know what happened to the Lenantech, but as for myself, I'd

have tried!" Jon said, rankling slightly at the smug tone of the man's

voice. "Apparently you haven't heard of what happened to the ship you

sent to pick me up. You won't see it again. And the only reason I'm

here is that I elected to come, following the directions of one of your

men that was dying."

* * * * *

The Senator glanced quickly at the men surrounding him. Then, "You can

tell me that part of the story later, Kane. I understand you're sort of

a--renegade Tinkerman, is that right?"

"That's right, but how did you learn--"

"My organization has many men in many places. I understand that you're

a rather out of the ordinary technician, Kane, and that at this minute

the ITA is after your hide. So I've a proposition for you. We can use

technicians." Stine was leaning back in his chair, now, relaxed, sure

of himself. The others did not look so relaxed, and to Jon, seemed far

from being as certain.

"First of all, I want to know who you are," Jon said, speaking Stine's

Terra dialect to the best of his ability. "Earth is no different a

planet than the rest."

"I said I would ask the questions, Kane! But for your information, this

organization is made up of men much like yourself. I'm assuming that

you achieved your technological proficiency by obtaining certain books

for yourself; books the Tinkers ordered destroyed, and no longer have

themselves. Well, your case is not exactly unique. The difference is,

you were trapped into selection for training by the ITA. My men were

not. We are, in the respect that we're free, in better position than

you are to break the ITA. And certainly you did not hope to do the job

single-handed."

"Break the ITA?" Jon asked. He felt a peculiar note of discord. These

men were not hiding. Not just hiding.

"Why of course." The big man shifted in his seat, again glanced around

at the others. Their eyes were still fastened on Jon as though they

had never seen a Tinkerman before. "They may not be dictators in the

true sense of the word, but they wield a tremendous political power

over more than a hundred planets, Kane. You know that. They have only

to refuse a planet its scheduled service visits, and the economy

and civilization of that planet is suddenly faced with collapse.

Ultimately, such a set-up is going to mean ruin anyway. Someday, there

is bound to be rebellion, and not on any single planet, but on many.

It will free men from the ITA perhaps, but it will also mean quick

retrogression; civilization will, because of its complexity, backslide

faster than men can regain what the Wars destroyed, or re-learn what

the Tinkers have kept from them.

"It might have worked if the ITA had not become sloppy. But it

can no longer even do a decent Project AA! It imperils the lives

of two galaxies, yet refuses to give men the knowledge to protect

themselves! Therefore, we are going to destroy the Tinkers, Kane. Our

propaganda machinery is gaining momentum daily, and this most recent

Geejay breakdown in Sol system is grist for our mill. Our technical

achievements are improving daily despite the fact that they have been

carried out under the handicap of utmost secrecy over a long period of

extremely difficult years.

"When I learned of your captivity by warp-beam from Titan and was told

about you and the woman and was asked if I wanted you, I said yes. I

spared you, Kane, and went to great trouble to obtain you, because

you know the Tinkers as we could never hope to know them. And, more

importantly, you can handle technology far better than either we or

they. Is that true?"

Jon hesitated, looked at the faces up-turned to him, saw the cold

bitterness in their eyes.

"I can make a double-A good for five hundred years."

"Just as we thought. You're dangerous to them, Kane, because for some

reason you know more than they do. People would start looking to you,

rather than to them, for their needs, and they're scared stiff you'll

go around blabbing all you know, ruining their hold. Well, that is just

the chance we want to give you. Help us, and later, you'll be able to

name your own price. Go back to the Tinkers, and you're a dead man."

The room was silent again, but their eyes were still upon him. He tried

to think, tried to evaluate what the big man had said. It all seemed so

logical, yet--yet there was something wrong. There was something they

did not understand. Or, perhaps, understood too well.

"I--I agree with you about the tremendous power they wield," Jon said

slowly, "but you're wrong about destroying them. It's true they're not

the technicians they once were. They have polluted logic with belief

and historical fact with legend; they do know _how_, but they don't

know _why_, and that's affecting their know-how, if you see what I

mean. They use belief more and more and reason less and less--"

Stine nodded. "Precisely. If knowledge is not given room to grow, it

deteriorates, and finally is nothing more than half understood pseudo

truths. Therefore I fail to see--"

"If you destroy them," Jon interrupted, "you suddenly remove the

last recognized seat of technical knowledge that exists in our two

galaxies. Recognized, you understand. And that'd mean real chaos,

Senator. The people would be so scared and helpless at the prospect

of being helpless that they'd revert to savages even faster than the

way in which you described. They'd panic for certain--panic as panic

hasn't been known since the Wars themselves." Jon let the sentence

trail off, half wondering as he spoke why he was suddenly championing a

system which he hated, defending a reactionary philosophy of existence

which stunted men's minds at every turn. For Stine was at least half

right--the Tinkers did threaten the very essence of intellectual

freedom. Yet at the same time he knew that to destroy them would be to

cause even worse harm.

It was as though the others around the table and the man who was his

captor did not exist, now. It had become a quiet, tense drama between

two minds, and Jon knew he had not been brought here to do Stine's

thinking for him.

"You know, Kane," Stine was saying then, his voice suddenly smooth and

soft, his big face relaxing into a studied grin, "they got their hooks

into you more deeply than I'd thought. You're still half-Tinker, aren't

you?"

"But I'm not speaking from loyalty! Only from logic--" The big man

waved a meaty hand deprecatingly, interrupted easily.

"Master Kane, the Space Tinkers must be forced to give up their books

and charts. They must be forced to relinquish this semi-intellectual,

semi-religious hold they have on over a hundred planets; their

monopoly, in short, must be broken!" A huge fist slammed emphatically

down on the littered table top. "My organization has worked long and

hard and preserved its secrets at great risk toward that end! We have

the ships, we have the weapons--some better, we believe, than those

of the ITA--and we have the men! And you, sir, are either with us or

against us!" His face had become florid, and Jon knew now that Stine

was playing for effect on the others; knew suddenly that his own logic

was right, and that it was again recognized as a threat, even as B-Haaq

had recognized it. A threat to personal power!

And suddenly words were coming in heated torrents from his own lips.

"Secrecy! It is all you and the ITA can think of! Whatever it is you

know or learn, it must be kept from others! Yes, even while you speak

of breaking the ITA monopoly of knowledge and power, you seek to form

an identical one yourself! Can't you understand that where there is

secrecy, peace and progress cannot exist? Can't you understand that in

the realm of science and technology, there are no secrets? The facts of

nature are everywhere in Creation, Senator! You cannot hide them! For

awhile you may blind people to them, but they cannot be hidden, they

are for everyone to see and use as he will, regardless of which side

he is on! The Tinkers have kept people blind to them for a few years,

but it has become increasingly difficult; and they are learning the

hard way that the worst of keeping secrets is the forgetting of them

yourself!"

Stine's face was becoming white and tense, and the others gave uneasy

glances in his direction, but he did not interrupt, and Jon kept going,

unleashing the whole torrent of thoughts that had tormented his soul

for so long, so very long.

"You speak of monopoly, Senator, but you're forming one yourself! You,

and your organization, have been fortunate enough, as I was, to have

found some of the old books, to have learned some of the old knowledge

with which the armament for the Wars was built, and against which, when

their horror was finally over, people everywhere rebelled. It was they

who burned the books, Senator! Not the ITA! It was they who wanted done

with all that seemed to them responsible for the carnage which they

had somehow survived! It was they--on a hundred planets--who without

thinking, ran down their scientists, their technicians; murdered them

for possessing the knowledge which they had misused! And the few

technicians who escaped were bitter and frightened men. They managed to

salvage a few of the old ships and escape. And theirs was the natural

error of assuming that if they were not to suffer what their murdered

companions had, they must think in terms of using what they alone knew

as a weapon against those who did not and would not be allowed to have

that knowledge!

"But--and listen to me, gentlemen!--even as the Senator has said, if

knowledge is not given room to grow, it deteriorates! And by keeping

their well guarded secrets to themselves, entrusting them only to

specially selected personnel whom they recruited year after year for

training from the planets so that their organization could grow more

rapidly in numbers, and by keeping those 'secrets' sacrosanct and

unchallangeable, they became at length outmoded, and finally half

forgotten and adulterated with pompous nonsense! And if you are to

do the same, then the same will happen to you!" He paused quickly

for fresh breath, then plunged on headlong. "The solution is not in

fighting and battle--for that is what precipitated the whole stupid

situation in the first place, as it always will. I told you I could do

a double-A that would last five hundred years, and I can! And I will do

it! And I will show you how to do it! But only on the condition that

your propaganda machine gives the Tinkers the entire credit for it!"

"Master Kane, that is enough!"

"I'm not finished yet! Can't you see the effect such a move will

have? The Tinkers will be grateful, first of all, because they're in

desperate straits right now. Secondly, they will realize that there

is superior knowledge to their own, and that it can be a beneficial

thing, rather than a threat to their well being. From that point they

might be convinced that their 'secrets' should no longer be kept, but

instead given back to the very people who once destroyed them in anger.

And thirdly, the people will have new faith in the ITA and its ability;

new respect for the technical knowledge which they now fear and covet

so dangerously! In such a way, gentlemen, you can get civilization

climbing again in such a way that the Tinkers will be eliminated, but

of their own volition, because they will at length have no more to

fear, and no further defensive purpose to serve.

"Unless--" and Jon paused for a long breath, "Unless, Senator, you

simply want the power the Tinkers now enjoy, for yourself!"

Stine looked at him for a long moment.

And then he smiled, but there was Winter in his eyes.

"We all make mistakes," he said softly. "Sorry. Haine! Take him away!"

X

Stealthily Deanne picked her way from shadow to shadow toward the

smooth walled depression, her feet scarcely touching the planetoid's

riven surface in the slight gravity. Yards from it, she got to her

stomach and crawled to the lip, peered over.

Every muscle in her body went tense as she saw the hidden hatch at the

crater's bottom sliding soundlessly closed.

As she had thought, the crater wall was artificially magnetized, and

in a half crouch, clinging to the deepest shadow cast by the grotesque

ball of Jupiter above her, she edged her way downward. She reached the

spot where the camouflaged hatch had closed, and, again prone, waited.

There was only the space of seconds before the round slab of metal

began opening! She tensed, and with her helmet touching the ground,

heard the sound of heavy footsteps climbing upward, making the hollow,

clanging sounds of space boots on metallic ladder rungs.

A space helmet suddenly thrust itself above the opening, and for a

frozen second, she could see the man's face. It was not Jon's! There

was a look of stunned surprise upon it for that timeless moment, and

Deanne knew even as she moved that it was this space between seconds or

never at all.

With all the strength in her body she swung her right leg, swung the

heavy toe of her spaceboot straight at the man's face plate!

He tried vainly to dodge, to drop downward to safety. Had Deanne waited

a heartbeat longer she would have missed. She felt the terrible impact

as her boot hit squarely, shattered the thin plastiglass of the helmet,

went through it to strike flesh and bone.

Instinctively her eyes went shut tight as the man inside the ruptured

suit virtually exploded.

But there was no time to think of what she'd done, to wonder if this

was murder or the duty of warfare: the man was dead. Half in, half out

of the yawning hatchway, sprawled like a bloody puppet, his weapons

still in their holsters at his sides. She took them. And even in the

light gravity of Callisto, it took nearly all the strength she could

summon and all her courage to haul the limp thing that had been a

man all the way out of the gaping shaft and then push it, over and

over, away from her, away from the hatch that had already begun to

automatically swing downward.

She squirmed quickly beneath it, found the ladder rungs with her boots,

and then clung to the slender ladder in the sudden darkness without

moving, her muscles trembling at the edge of panic. To misjudge now was

to fall hideously through blackness to certain destruction only God

knew how abysmally far below.

Then somehow she steeled herself. Made her legs move mechanically;

found the next rung below. And then the next and the next.

* * * * *

The red blindness of exhaustion under the blaze of desert suns flooded

over his numbed brain in a dark backwash of pain, and with it were all

the past tortures of Prokyman stockades and the hopeless defeat that

had lain at the fringe of every movement of his life; Jon Kane could

not see and could hear only weirdly distorted sounds for he was, if not

yet dead, then close to death, and only through some freak of neural

reaction, not quite beyond the threshold of consciousness. But he had

not spoken. And now that power was quite lost to him.

But he could still somehow feel the animal presence of his torturers,

ringed tight around him yet in the tiny, glaring cubicle of polished

steel; there was new pain in his shattered face, and he knew it was

the freezing carbon dioxide spray designed to shock him back to full

consciousness. But now it was only a new pain.

There was the voice of Haine.

"Hurry up, get him around. If he cashes in before we get anything out

of him Stine'll blow a connection. That's a man who hates to lose on an

investment."

"Didn't invest much. Didn't risk much either, if you ask me. What else

was that broken down tank good for anyway? I say kill the--"

"Get him around and shut up."

The freezing pain again. But the darkness held.

New sounds. Stine.

"What have you been trying to do, kill him outright? How much have you

gotten?"

"Nothing yet, sir. He's either the craziest man in the universe or the

toughest. Or else he doesn't know anything."

"Nonsense! The things this man knows can put us all in the shade, and

don't you forget it! But if we don't find out just how much his people

still know--or don't know--it'll be your necks as well as mine! They

realize there's somebody else besides themselves in Space, now."

The darkness seemed to be lifting a little; the numbness seemed to be

thawing from his brain, and the pain became more agonizingly acute.

"We'll try again, sir--"

"Never mind. There's a better use for this fellow than killing him by

inches. Perhaps he places little value on his own life, but when it

comes to those of a few billion people. Yes. Haine, do you think you

could wreck a Geejay?"

"Wreck a--" There was the sound of hoarse breathing from a half dozen

men, and Jon felt something stir inside him, but it was as though he

were a thing disconnected from his physical body; that he no longer had

power of decision over it. "--sure, I guess so. A double-A in reverse!

Haw! Where?"

"Canis Major, Proky system, if that's where he's from."

"Don't look like a Prokyman to me."

"Never mind that. Could you do the job so that the ITA couldn't repair

it? And I mean NOT AT ALL?"

"Hell, sir, one of our E-blasters would do that much--"

"I have a feeling that one very simple way to gain our end, Haine,

would be through the use of our E-blasters against every ship the ITA

possesses--and just what do you suppose that would leave us? This

fellow here wasn't so far wrong, you know, when he pointed out what

would happen in the event the ITA were suddenly destroyed. We'd be left

with a universe full of the screaming meemies. We'd be on top, but

on top of the biggest booby hatch you ever saw! If we're going to do

ourselves any good, we leave the ITA in one piece. The only difference

being, we tell them what to do!"

"Now ain't that nice of us, to just walk in like that without firing a

charge--"

"I'm doing the thinking around here, Johnson!"

"It's a cinch you ain't doing much of the shooting! Letting

fancy-brains, here, tell you--"

Jon heard the sudden sound of bone crunching against bone; there was a

choked yelp of pain, and the sound of a man falling heavily. Then Stine

was talking again, softly.

"Anyone else here who prefers muscle to brain power?"

"Sir--Johnson's--you--"

"Bury him later, and listen to me now! I want the Gravity-Justifier in

Procyon smashed so that the Tinkers can't do a thing with it--but so

that _he can_! Do you understand, Haine?"

"I can smash it up so that _we_ couldn't put it back together in a

million years."

"You'll be responsible. Let's get this man aboard the _New World_ and

be ready to up-ship within an hour. We're going to have our cake,

gentlemen, and eat it, too! Unless, of course, our friend Kane, here,

will be able to watch ten billion people die as an entire planetary

system breaks up, and do nothing about it! All right, let's get going!"

And then there was the sound of another man coming into the already

crowded cubicle.

"Senator Stine, sir! Look what we found coming down the ladder! And in

a shooting mood, too! I'll need a new space rig--"

"JON!"

"Well! The ITA hasn't lost much time! She looks a little bit white,

doesn't she, Thurston? And seems to know our friend, here! Gentlemen, I

think things are going to work out rather well...."

And that was the moment that Jon Kane returned to full consciousness,

and full pain.

But he kept his eyes shut, his voice silent.

* * * * *

The banks of viewscreens in the _New World's_ NIC room reflected a

kaleidoscope of horror as no man had seen horror before, and as only a

man of Kane's century could understand it. To the uninitiated observer

of an earlier time whose entire life experience had been within the

narrow confines of a single planet, the softly glowing spheres in the

screens would have seemed remote things; untouchable, and of only

speculative interest. The interest may have been heightened slightly

by the sudden rifts that appeared in the surfaces of some, or by the

peculiarly undulating ocean masses that seemed bent on erasing the land

masses of others.

But to Jon, securely shackled to an ackseat as was Deanne beside him,

the screens showed an impending wave of death and destruction on a

scale that bordered on the unthinkable.

Procyon I and II were already torn near the point of total break-up;

III, IV and V, because of their greater masses, were trembling with a

slower rhythm, but the close-up screens showed their largest cities had

already begun to crumble. Their streets were clogged with both dead

and living, and the gaping mouths of panic stricken faces were eerily

silent.

The six outer planets had not yet felt their first tremors, but they

had begun to enter subtly-altered orbital paths, and whole continents

were unnaturally bathed in the hellish light of twin suns that spewed

great, flaming masses of their life-stuff with unchecked abandon into

the infinite well of the void.

The largest screen showed a wide, wafer-thin disc floating with an

inhuman serenity in the blackness, its flat plane tipped gently to the

ecliptic, its surface crawling with tiny ant-like creatures that were

men. Hovering above it was a glistening, pencil-shaped object from

which more men came, their tiny forms followed by irregularly shaped

masses, weightless on the invisible tow-lines.

"Not doing much good, are they, Kane?"

The big man hulked above him, beefy face florid but split with a

relaxed, confident grin. Jon broke his long silence.

"Starn has told you he would surrender! Why can't you accept it, and

then I promise you I'll--"

"You'll do what? You'd pull everything in the book and you know it,

Kane, and we'd end up having to kill you or be killed ourselves. And if

you were to die." Jon turned his glance toward Deanne, saw her shudder,

then turn her eyes away from the screens, bitter defeat mingled tightly

with the tears in them. "And anyway," Stine was saying, "Starn's not

the boss anymore! And what good d'you think it's going to do me to push

over a has-been? B-Haaq is the one who's calling their plays now, Kane.

And B-Haaq is the boy who wants to fight! Too bad you didn't kill him

when you had the chance! Look at him out there! Trying to tell me he

can fix it, or anything I can do to it! Telling me if I move this ship

in a mile closer he'll blow me out of Space! Oh, brother--"

"He could, Stine," Jon said. And the big man whirled.

"With those antiquated pop guns he carries? Don't try to make me angry,

Kane. He's going to sweat it out there until he and his whole damn crew

drops. And then I'm sending you in! By that time things'll be so bad

I'll _know_ I can trust you. You're the type, Kane! Fight like hell up

to the last second, and then comes the noble, heroic sacrifice part.

Oh, you'll do the job, all night after you've sat here watching long

enough!"

Jon bit his lip, watched the big man stalk back and forth before the

wide banks of screens.

"I could beat him in less time than it takes to tell it with

E-blasters!" Stine was saying. "But they say there's a better way of

winning arguments than with guns, don't they, Master Kane? Slaves are

always more valuable than corpses, for one thing, and for another, I

think people ought to know that Martin Stine has more to his string

than guns alone! Yes...." His broad back was to both Jon and Deanne,

now, and he was staring out through a wide port into the gem-studded

blackness, and his words were for his own ears. "They will know who is

a technician and who is not! The ITA is weak with age--and the weak

become the slaves, and the strong become the masters! They shall see."

"Stine, you're a fool!"

The big man turned, faced Jon, and his big face blanched in sudden

anger, and then the color flooded back to it and he laughed.

"Stine, do you know what B-Haaq will do when he realizes that he has

failed? When he realizes that the woman who spurned him and the man

who deserted his ranks are aboard this ship? Do you know what he'll do

rather than knuckle under to you? He's the same kind of man you are,

Stine. He'll come gunning with everything he's got! You'll be a seive

before you know what hit you ... and for once I'll be glad to see

B-Haaq take a trick!"

He heard Deanne gasp, could almost feel the trembling of her body.

"That's enough out of you, Kane, or there'll be a couple dozen more

bandages on that honest face of yours! If that puppy even turns his

nose toward me, I'll show him what real guns are! And let him sweat out

there without his engines for awhile!"

"You only think you will! You haven't the faintest idea of what alloy

the Tinkers build their ships, and you know it! And it's going to be

fun watching you find out."

"If they use the tin they use to fix everything else."

"They may be stupid, Stine, but they've been around quite awhile."

"All right, so you know what alloy their hulls are built of! So my

batteries of electro-cannon will--"

"Bounce off like a flashlantern beam, Stine. But I guess you'll want to

wait and see for yourself. And if I know B-Haaq, you'll get the chance!"

And suddenly Stine was towering over him again. Jon winced at the

vicious slap that landed squarely on his misshapen face.

"You'll tell me the alloy! Do you hear me?" A slap harder than the

first. "Do you understand, Kane?"

Jon felt blood trickle down his chin.

"I'll not tell you a thing, Stine. Not about the alloy, or even how to

rig your guns to beat it."

The next blow was with Stine's closed fist. Jon's head snapped back

viciously, and he held on by sheer will to consciousness. He tensed for

another blow. It did not come. And suddenly, Stine's voice was a calm,

almost silky thing, barely loud enough for Jon to hear.

"A pity," he was saying, "that your man is so defiant a fellow,

Lenantech. I almost imagine that even after the risk you took to save

his hide, he'd watch your pretty face be beaten to a pulp rather than

tell me the things I'd like to know! That's the way with these noble

fellows, you know. Of course, a girl's face isn't everything. But, I

suppose that he'd even--"

"Stine, you wouldn't dare!"

"Care to try me, Master Kane?"

"Damn you, Stine--"

The big man clenched his right fist, raised it, and Jon watched

Deanne's face whiten, saw the silent plea in her eyes in the quick

glance she gave him. But her taut lips did not move.

"You had better speak, Kane--"

"All right! All right, I'll rig your guns for you!"

"And you'd better hurry! Unless my screens are out of order, your

precious ten billion Prokymen haven't too much time left."

Jon looked at the screens again, and he knew his horror was reflected

in his swollen face. Something writhed sickeningly inside him and he

looked at the screen in which the Geejay swung. B-Haaq and his men

were at last leaving it! Leaving it, giving up.

But he said nothing as Stine summoned Haine from in-ship, and kept his

silence as the squat, burly man unshackled him while Stine held a hand

weapon at Deanne's head.

"I'll need her to help," he bit out then. "On your guns, as well as on

the Justifier. She's worked on double-A's before."

"She stays, Kane!"

"Very well, she stays. But if this outfit can't get the Geejay fixed

either, people won't be too impressed, will they. I say I need her,

Stine. That thing out there is too badly wrecked even for me, now,

alone. But it's up to you. I'll rig your guns."

"All right, Kane! All right. The woman goes with you. But she stays

right here until you've done a job on my batteries!"

"You win, I'm not arguing. Let's get it over with."

Haine led him out of the NIC room, and he could feel Deanne's accusing

eyes at his back. She hated him now. He knew it.