ceable
indications of tension. Now and then, there was a brief, low-pitched
conversation at one of the desks.

Quillan stood near the center of the office, Ryter and Orca a dozen
feet from him on either side. Four Star guards were stationed along
the walls. From the office one could see through a large doorspace cut
through both sides of a hall directly into the adjoining transmitter
room. Four more guards were in there. Aside from the men in the
entrance hall and at the subspace portal, what was available at the
moment of Ryter's security force was concentrated at this point.

The arrangement made considerable sense; and Quillan gave no sign of
being aware that the eyes of the guards shifted to him a little more
frequently than to any other point in the office, or that none of them
had moved his hand very far away from his gun since they had come in
here. But that also made sense. In the general tension area of the
Executive Block's ground level, a specific point of tension--highly
charged though undetected by the non-involved personnel--was the one
provided by the presence of Bad News Quillan here. Ryter was more than
suspicious by now; the opened portal on the fourth level, the
disappearance of Kinmarten and the Duke, left room for a wide variety
of speculations. Few of those speculations could be very favorable to
Bad News. Ryter obviously preferred to let things stand as they were
until the Beldon freighter was taken and the major part of his group
had returned from the subspace sections of the Star. At that time, Bad
News could expect to come in for some very direct questioning by the
security chief.

The minutes dragged on. Under the circumstances, a glance at his watch
could be enough to bring Ryter's uncertainties up to the explosion
point, and Quillan also preferred to let things stand as they were for
the moment. But he felt reasonably certain that over an hour had
passed since he'd left Reetal; and so far there had been no hint of
anything unusual occurring in the front part of the building. The
murmur of voices in the main control office continued to eddy about
him. There were indications that in the transmitter room across the
hall messages had begun to be exchanged between the Star and the
approaching liner.

A man sitting at a desk near Quillan stood up presently, went out into
the hall and disappeared. A short while later, the white-suited figure
returned and picked up the interrupted work. Quillan