l; I'll be a
magician," he said. "Pickering'll be a magician, I mean; he's the boy
who'll save our bacon, if it's saveable." He looked somberly across
the flame-reflecting water. "Let's not kid ourselves; we're just
kicking and biting at the guards on the way up the gallows-steps."

[Illustration]

"Well, why stop till the trap's sprung?" she asked. "What'll happen to
these people on this planet, after we're atomized?"

"That I don't want to think about. Kankad's Town will get the second
bomb; Orgzild won't dare leave the Kragans after he's wiped us out.
Yoorkerk and Jonkvank, in the North, will turn on Keaveney and Shapiro
and Karamessinis and Hid O'Leary and wipe them out. And when the next
ship gets in here and they find out what happened, they'll send the
Federation Space Navy, and this planet'll get it worse than Fenris
did. They'll blast anything that has four arms and a face like a
lizard...."

Half a dozen aircars lifted suddenly from the airport and streaked
away to the north-east. As they went past, in the light of the
burning-city, he could see that at least three of them had multiple
rocket-launchers on top. In a matter of seconds, a gun-cutter raced
after them, and a second, which had been over Konkrook, jettisoned a
bomb and turned away to follow.

"Maybe that's it," Paula said.

"Well, if it is, we won't be any better off anywhere else than here,"
he told her. "Let's stay where we are and watch."

After what seemed like a long time, however, a twinkle of lights
showed over the East Konk Mountains. They weren't the flashes of
explosions; some were magnesium flares, and some were the lights of a
ship.

"That's _Procyon_, from Grank," he said. "Everybody gets a good mark
for this--detection stations, interceptors, gun-cutters. If that had
been it, there'd have been a good chance of stopping it." He felt
better than he had since Pickering had told him that Lourenco Gomes
was dead. "It's a good thing Gorkrink didn't pick up any dope on
guided missiles, while he was at it. As long as they have to deliver
it with contragravity, we have a chance."

They rose from the balustrade where they had been sitting, and, for
the first time, he discovered that he had had his left arm over her
shoulder and that she had had her right hand resting on the point of
his right hip, just above his pistol. He picked up the folder of
papers she had been carrying, and put her into the elevator ahead of
him, and it was onl