his chauffeur's pockets full of top secrets. Now I've
seen everything!"

"Not quite everything," MacLeod said. "Kato's going to put that capsule
in another cigarette pack, and he'll send one of his lab girls to
Oppenheimer Village with it, with a message from Lowiewski to the effect
that he couldn't get away. And when this chauffeur takes it out, he'll
run into a Counter Espionage road-block on the way to town. They'll
shoot him, of course, and they'll probably transfer Nayland to the
Mississippi Valley Flood Control Project, where he can't do any more
damage. At least, we'll have him out of our hair."

"If we have any hair left," Heym ben-Hillel gloomed. "You've got Nayland
into trouble, but you haven't got us out of it."

"What do you mean?" Suzanne Maillard demanded. "He's found the traitor
and stopped the leak."

"Yes, but we're still responsible, as a team, for this betrayal," the
Israeli pointed out. "This Nayland is only a symptom of the enmity which
politicians and militarists feel toward the Free Scientists, and of
their opposition to the research-contract system. Now they have a
scandal to use. Our part in stopping the leak will be ignored; the
publicity will be about the treason of a Free Scientist."

"That's right," Sir Neville Lawton agreed. "And that brings up another
point. We simply can't hand this fellow over to the authorities. If we
do, we establish a precedent that may wreck the whole system under which
we operate."

"Yes: it would be a fine thing if governments start putting Free
Scientists on trial and shooting them," Farida Khouroglu supported him.
"In a few years, none of us would be safe."

"But," Suzanne cried, "you are not arguing that this species of an
animal be allowed to betray us unpunished?"

"Look," Rudolf von Heldenfeld said. "Let us give him his pistol, and one
cartridge, and let him remove himself like a gentleman. He will spare
himself the humiliation of trial and execution, and us all the
embarrassment of having a fellow scientist pilloried as a traitor."

"Now there's a typical Prussian suggestion," Lowiewski said.

* * * * *

Kato Sugihara, returning alone, looked around the table. "Did I miss
something interesting?" he asked.

"Oh, very," Lowiewski told him. "Your Junker friend thinks I should
perform _seppuku_."

Kato nodded quickly. "Excellent idea!" he congratulated von Heldenfeld.
"If he does, he'll save everybody a lot of troub