rrul was in no real danger. Much as it benefited the Movement the
laxity of Agronian security was one of the chief reasons why Dirrul
scorned the Planetary Union. The space-wide patrols of the
Air-Command, the city guards and the electronic paralysis barricades
created a feeling of internal control--but it was all a glittering
sham. If it were not for the Nuclear Beams the whole system would long
since have crumbled under the first pressure from outside.

With no difficulty he picked up Glenna and Hurd and took them to the
South Desert, where he put them aboard the sleek Vininese space-ship.
It was one of the new Dragon design--compact, efficient, faster than
anything built by the Planetary Union, protected by sixteen circular
batteries and yet small enough to be handled by one man.

Dirrul had seen only one other Vininese Space-dragon and that from a
distance at the Agronian commercial airport, when the last Vininese
ambassador arrived. Technically there was no reason why Paul Sorgel
could not have landed there as well, except that the Customs
questionnaire might have proved embarrassing.

Twenty years earlier, when Dirrul was still a schoolboy, the Galactic
War had ended. Since that time relations between the Planetary Union
and the Vininese Confederacy had steadily improved--at least in
appearance. Undoubtedly there were commercial interests on both sides
anxious to maintain peace and in recent years the quantity of goods in
trade had grown enormously. But it was a truce, not a peace--a
compromise, rather than a victory--forced on the galaxy when the
scientists of the Planetary Union discovered the Nuclear Beams.

Pain shot through Dirrul's mind as he carried Glenna into the
pressurized chamber under the control room. She and Hurd were still
unconscious but Glenna turned in his arms and her eyes fluttered open.
She looked at him and screamed in terrible agony before the pilot of
the Space-dragon plunged a hypodermic sedative into her arm.

"It is better," he said to Dirrul in throaty Vininese. "So beautiful a
one should not feel the pain." Carefully he fastened the needlepoint
of a wall tube into Glenna's vein and another into Hurd's.

"Synthetic blood feeding," he said with a smile. "It will keep them
alive, perhaps even permitting minor wounds to heal, until I deliver
them to the authorities on Vinin. You see, sir, my little ship is
well-equipped." He slammed the round door of the hospital room shut
and led D