bar, which was the only hiding place
in it. Then we went back to the rear and tiptoed to the third floor.

The meeting room was empty. So were the offices behind it. I looked in
all of them, expecting to find Bish Ware's body. Maybe a couple of
other bodies, too. I'd seen him shoot the tread-snail, and I didn't
think he'd die unpaid for. In Steve Ravick's office, the safe was open
and a lot of papers had been thrown out. I pointed that out to Oscar,
and he nodded. After seeing that, he seemed to relax, as though he
wasn't expecting to find anybody any more. We went to the third floor.
Ravick's living quarters were there, and they were magnificently
luxurious. The hunters, whose money had paid for all that magnificence
and luxury, cursed.

There were no bodies there, either, or on the landing stage above. I
unhooked the radio again.

"You can come in, now," I said. "The place is empty. Nobody here but
us Vigilantes."

"Huh?" Joe couldn't believe that. "How'd they get out?"

"They got out on the Second Level Down." I told him about the
sleep-gassed guard.

"Did you bring him to? What did he say?"

"Nothing; we didn't. We can't. You get sleep-gassed, you sleep till
you wake up. That ought to be two to four hours for this fellow."

"Well, hold everything; we're coming in."

We were all in the social room; a couple of the men had poured drinks
or drawn themselves beers at the bar and rung up no sale on the cash
register. Somebody else had a box of cigars he'd picked up in Ravick's
quarters on the fourth floor and was passing them around. Joe and
about two or three hundred other hunters came crowding up the
escalator, which they had turned on below.

"You didn't find Bish Ware, either, I'll bet," Joe was saying.

"I'm afraid they took him along for a hostage," Oscar said. "The guard
was knocked out with Walt's gas gadget, that Bish was carrying."

"Ha!" Joe cried. "Bet you it was the other way round; Bish took them
out."

That started an argument. While it was going on, I went to the
communication screen and got the _Times_, and told Dad what had
happened.

"Yes," he said. "That was what I was afraid you'd find. Glenn Murell
called in from the spaceport a few minutes ago. He says Mort Hallstock
came in with his car, and he heard from some of the workmen that Bish
Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher came in on the Main City Level in a
jeep. They claimed protection from a mob, and Captain Courtland's
police a