e with his left
hand, and punched him hard in the pit of the stomach with his right
fist. The man's mouth flew open, and a green capsule, the size and
shape of a small bean, flew out. Pushing Dalla aside before she would
step on it, he kicked the murderer in the stomach, doubling him over,
and chopped him on the base of the skull with the edge of his hand.
The pseudo-policeman dropped senseless.

With a handful of handkerchief-tissue from his pocket, he picked up
the disgorged capsule, wrapping it carefully after making sure that it
was unbroken. Then he looked around. The other two assassins were
dead. Tortha Karf, who had been looking at the man in Proletarian
dress whom Vall had killed first, turned, looked in another direction,
and then cursed. Vall followed his eyes, and cursed also. One of the
two policemen who had gotten out of the aircar was dead, too, and so
was the all-important witness, Salgath Trod--as dead as
Nebu-hin-Abenoz, a hundred thousand parayears away.

* * * * *

The whole thing had ended within thirty seconds; for about half as
long, everybody waited, poised in a sort of action-vacuum, for
something else to happen. Dalla had dropped the shoulder-bag with
which she had clubbed the prisoner's needler out of his hand, and
caught up the fallen weapon. When she saw that the man was down and
motionless, she laid it aside and began picking up the glittering or
silken trifles that had spilled from the burst bag. Vall retrieved his
own weapon, glanced over it, and holstered it. Sothran Barth, the
lieutenant in charge of the landing stage, was bawling orders, and men
were coming out of the ready-room and piling into vehicles to pursue
the aircar which had brought the assassins.

"Barth!" Vall called. "Have you a hypodermic and a sleep-drug ampoule?
Well, give this boy a shot; he's only impact-stunned. Be careful of
him; he's important." He glanced around the landing-stage. "Fact is,
he's all we have to show for this business."

Then he stooped to help Dalla gather her things, picking up a few of
them--a lighter, a tiny crystal perfume flask, miraculously unbroken,
a face-powder box which had sprung open and spilled half its contents.
He handed them to her, while Sothran Barth bent over the prisoner and
gave him an injection, then went to the body of the other
pseudo-policeman, forcing open his mouth. In his cheek, still
unbroken, was a second capsule, which he added to t