at him with a rifle.
Several times a bullet smacked warmly against his head or his back.

He continued walking slowly up the street. At its far end several men
appeared dragging a small howitzer--probably the only piece in the local
armory. They scurried around it, trying to get it aimed and loaded.

"Fools. Stupid fools," Hall shouted at them.

The men could not seem to get the muzzle of the gun down, and when he
was a dozen paces from it they took to their heels. He tore the heavy
cannon off of its carriage and with one blow of his fist caved it in. He
left it lying in the street broken and useless.

Almost as suddenly as it came, his anger left him. He stopped and looked
back at the people cringing in the doorways.

"You poor, cruel fools," Hall said again.

He sat down in the middle of the street on the twisted howitzer barrel
and buried his head in his hands. There was nothing else for him to do.
He knew that in just a matter of seconds, the ships with their
permallium nets and snares would be on him.

* * * * *

Since Jordan's ship was not large enough to transport Jon Hall's great
weight back to Grismet, the terrestrial government put at the agent's
disposal a much heavier vessel, one room of which had been hastily lined
with permallium and outfitted as a prison cell. A pilot by the name of
Wilkins went with the ship. He was a battered old veteran, given to
cigar smoking, clandestine drinking and card playing.

The vessel took off, rose straight through the atmosphere for about
forty miles, and then hung, idly circling Earth, awaiting clearance
before launching into the pulse drive. A full course between Earth and
Grismet had to be plotted and cleared by the technicians at the dispatch
center because the mass of the vessel increased so greatly with its
pulsating speed that if any two ships passed within a hundred thousand
miles of each other, they would at least be torn from their course, and
might even be totally destroyed.

Wilkins had proposed a pinochle game, and he and Jordan sat playing in
the control room.

The pilot had been winning and he was elated. "Seventy-six dollars so
far," he announced after some arithmetic. "The easiest day's pay I made
this month."

Jordan shuffled the cards and dealt them out, three at a time. He was
troubled by his own thoughts, and so preoccupied that he scarcely
followed the game.

"Spades, again," the pilot commented gleefully