on, and Vernon
said viciously to Bellaver,

"He'll never lead you to the starship. I can read his mind. When you've
turned me in and blackened your grandfather's name to clear him, he'll
laugh in your face. What are you, Bellaver, a fool?"

"Am I, Hyrst?"

"That's for you to find out. I'm offering you the starship for Vernon,
and that's fair enough, because I want him as bad as you want it. And I
can tell you, Bellaver, if you decide to play it smart and call in your
guards to hunt me down, it will do you no good. I won't be alive when
they take me."

Silence. In his mind's eye Hyrst could see the beads of sweat running
down Bellaver's face behind his helmet. He could see Vernon's face, too.
It gave him pleasure.

"It should be an easy decision, Bellaver," he said. "After all, suppose
I am lying. What have you got to lose but Vernon? And with his record,
that isn't much."

"Hold him," said Bellaver. "All right, Hyrst. I'll do it. But I'll tell
you now. If you lie to me, there won't be any re-awakening in another
fifty years. This will be for good."

"Fair enough," said Hyrst. "I'm putting my gun away. I'm coming in."

He walked quickly through the snow toward the tower.

CHAPTER X

On the bridge of his yacht, Bellaver turned to Hyrst and said,

"I've done what you wanted. Now find me that starship."

Hyrst nodded. "Take off."

The rockets roared and thundered, and the swift yacht leaped quivering
into the sky.

Hyrst sat quietly in his recoil chair. He felt a different man, changed
entirely in the last few days. Much had happened in those days.

Bellaver had got busy on the radio even before his yacht left Titan, and
the story of the Lazarites had burst like a nova upon the Solar System.
Already there were instances of suspected Lazarites being mobbed by
their neighbors, and Government was frantically concerning itself with
all the new, far-reaching implications of the Humane Penalty.

Close on the heels of this bomb-shell had come Vernon's angry
accusations against Bellaver, delivered as soon as he was given to the
authorities on Mars. During the twenty Martian hours necessary for
formal charge and the taking of depositions, and while Bellaver's yacht
was being refueled, Vernon's story of the starship went out on all the
interworld circuits. And it had been as Christina had said. The whole
Solar System was frantic to have the Lazarites caught and stopped, and
every man in space became a sel