stopped in front of him.

"Chum," he asked, "any idea where Movaine is at the moment? They just
give me this message for him--"

Still scowling, the other scratched his chin and blinked. "Uh ...
dunno for sure," he said after a moment. "He oughta be in the third
level conference room with the rest of 'em. Uh ... dunno you oughta
barge in there right now, pal! The commodore's _reee-lly_ hot about
somethin'!"

Quillan looked worried. "Gotta chance it, I guess! Message is pretty
important, they say--" He turned, went through the center portal of
the three, abruptly found himself walking along a wide, well-lit hall.

Nobody in sight here, or in the first intersecting passage he came to.
When he reached the next passage, he heard voices on the right, turned
toward them, went by a string of closed doors on both sides until,
forty feet on, the passage angled again and opened into a long,
high-ceilinged room. The voices came through an open door on the right
side of the room. Standing against the wall beside the door were two
men whose heads turned sharply toward Quillan as he appeared in the
passage. The short, chunky one scowled. The big man next to him, the
top of whose head had been permanently seared clear of hair years
before by a near miss from a blaster, dropped his jaw slowly. His eyes
popped.

"My God!" he said.

"Movaine in there, Baldy?" Quillan inquired, coming up.

"Movaine! He ... you ... how--"

The chunky man took out his gun, waved it negligently at Quillan.
"Tell the ape to blow, Perk. He isn't wanted here."

"Ape?" Quillan asked softly. His right hand moved, had the gun by the
barrel, twisted, reversed the gun, jammed it back with some violence
into the chunky man's stomach. "Ape?" he repeated. The chunky man went
white.

"Bad News--" Baldy Perk breathed. "Take it easy! That's Orca. He's the
commodore's torpedo. How--"

"Where's Movaine?"

"Movaine ... he ... uh--"

"All right, he's not here. And Lancion can't have arrived yet. Is
Cooms in there?"

"Yeah," Baldy Perk said weakly. "Cooms is in there, Quillan."

"Let's go in." Quillan withdrew the gun, slid it into a pocket, smiled
down at Orca. "Get it back from your boss, slob. Be seeing you!"

Orca's voice was a husky whisper.

"You will, friend! You will!"

* * * * *

The conference room was big and sparsely furnished. Four men sat at
the long table in its center. Quillan knew two of them--Marras Coo