Bellaver gave Hyrst a long look. "I'll
trust you because I have to. But I wasn't making an empty threat. And
I'll do it so there won't be any thought of murder. You'd better find me
that ship, Hyrst."

From then on, Bellaver hardly slept. He paced the corridors and haunted
the control room and watched Hyrst with a gnawing, agonizing doubt.
Hyrst began to feel for him a distant sort of pity, as he might have
felt for a man afflicted by some disease brought on by his own excesses.

* * * * *

The yacht passed the orbit of Earth, refueled at an obscure space
station, and sped on. Hyrst continued to stall Bellaver, ordering a
change of course from time to time to keep him happy. At intervals he
let his mind rove through those dark spaces they were leaving farther
behind with every passing second. Each time it was a greater effort, but
still there was no sign of the starship or its base, and so he knew that
the labor still went on.

By the time the yacht reached the orbit of Venus a fan-shaped cordon of
other ships had collected around and behind her drawn by the word that
Bellaver was on his way to find the starship. Government patrols were in
constant touch.

"They can't interfere," said Bellaver. "I've got a lien on that ship, a
formal claim."

"Sure," said Hyrst. "But you'd better be the first to find it.
Possession, you know. Bear off a bit. Mislead them. They're sure now
they know where you're going."

"Don't they?" said Bellaver, looking ahead at the glittering spark that
was Mercury. "There isn't anyplace else to go."

"Isn't there?"

Bellaver stared at him, narrow-eyed. "The legend of the Vulcan was
exploded by the first explorers. There is no intra-Mercurial world."

Hyrst shot a swift stabbing mental glance toward Pluto. Still nothing.
He sighed and said easily,

"There wasn't then. There is now."

He brazened out the look of incredulity on Bellaver's face.

"These are Lazarites, remember, not men. They built a place for
themselves where nobody would ever think to look. Not a planet, of
course, just a floating workshop. A satellite. And now you know. So you
can let them beat you to Mercury."

"All right," said Bellaver softly. "All right."

They passed Mercury, lost in the blaze of the Sun, and only a few ships
followed them, far behind. The rest stopped to search the craggy valleys
of the Twilight Belt, and the bleak icefields of the Dark Side.

And now Hyrst h