ming. An army of Earther policemen erupted into
the room and confronted him as he stood panting amid the wreckage. They
were all short men, but there must have been twenty of them.

"Don't shoot him," someone called. And then they advanced in a body.

He picked up the operating table and hurled it at them. Three policemen
crumpled under it, but the rest kept coming. He batted them away like
insects, but they surrounded him and piled on. For a few moments he
struggled under the load of fifteen small men, punching and kicking and
yelling. He burst loose for an instant, but two of them were clinging to
his legs and he hit the floor with a crash. They were on him
immediately, and he stopped struggling after a while.

* * * * *

The next thing he knew he was lying sprawled on the floor of his room in
Spacertown, breathing dust out of the tattered carpet. He was a mass of
cuts and bruises, and he knew they must have given him quite a
going-over. He was sore from head to foot.

So they hadn't arrested him. No, of course not; no more than they would
arrest any wild animal who went berserk. They had just dumped him back
in the jungle. He tried to get up, but couldn't make it. Quite a
going-over it must have been. Nothing seemed broken, but everything was
slightly bent.

"Satisfied now?" said a voice from somewhere. It was a pleasant sound to
hear, a voice, and he let the mere noise of it soak into his mind. "Now
that you've proved to everyone that you really are just an ape?"

He twisted his neck around--slowly, because his neck was stiff and sore.
Laney was sitting on the edge of his bed with two suitcases next to her.

"It really wasn't necessary to run wild there," she said. "The Earthers
all knew you were just an animal anyway. You didn't have to prove it so
violently."

"Okay, Laney. Quit it."

"If you want me to. I just wanted to make sure you knew what had
happened. A gang of Earther cops brought you back a while ago and dumped
you here. They told me the story."

"Leave me alone."

"You've been telling everyone that all along, Rolf. Look where it got
you. A royal beating at the hands of a bunch of Earthers. Now that
they've thrown you out for the last time, has it filtered into your
mind that this is where you belong?"

"In Spacertown?"

"Only between trips. You belong in space, Rolf. No surgeon can make you
an Earther. The Earthers are dead, but they don't know it yet. All