"You steer clear of the Countess Krak! There may be others that don't want this mission to succeed, but this afternoon they took the rear seat. The primary danger you're courting right this moment consists of making passes at that female. Now, I know it is lonely in space and that you're just back from a long trip and all that. But the Countess Krak is death incarnate! Stay away!" I laughed a bit to take the sting out of the order. "After all, it will be hard enough to get you off this planet without that! Now we won't say any more about it." Heller sat there for a while. I could see he was thinking about something very hard. I respected his silence. It was obvious he had a problem now for I could see him gnawing at it.

"There's one thing I can't remember," said Jettero.

I was all attention, inviting his confidence.

He looked at me searchingly. I could see he was deeply troubled, even perplexed. "Would you say her eyes were gray? Or are they pale blue?" I gave it up in disgust. I got him back to the room. I had other important things to do anyway.

Lombar always said that when you let an underling get away with something and did not punish him severely, you yourself would shortly be in trouble. I considered this very wise.

I could sense that I myself was walking on a very thin crust and, without any doubt whatever, I was headed for trouble. Therefore, it was obvious that I had not properly handled underlings. Before things got further out of hand, I knew I had to punish that platoon commander. His conduct while "guarding" Heller was unforgivable!

So as soon as I had stuffed down some moldy bread – what passes for food at Spiteos – I headed for Camp Endurance. And when I got through, it would have another reason to be nicknamed "Camp Kill." The fortress is connected to the camp by an underground tunnel about a mile and a half long. Traffic with the outside world, for Spiteos, had Camp Endurance as its terminal: any overflight of the area or any inspection for that matter, found only the sprawling camp; it's traffic being justified by the "training activities" it conducted.

We tried to keep traffic to a minimum but there was plenty of it just the same. The tunnel traffic was very heavy tonight. The outgoing zipbus I caught was halted for a good twenty minutes in the middle of the dark tunnel, parked on a turnout, letting incoming transports through to Spiteos.

The view I had from the zipbus was restricted, limited to a small diamond window beside the seat; the lights were bad but they flashed upon the sides of the incoming vehicles in a green blur.

Plenty of traffic! I wondered what was up. I caught the flick of high-rank flags. I was battered by the roar of heavy-armored trucks. The air disturbance of escort tanks was like a blastcannon and hurt my ears.

Something was certainly up! I yelled up to the half-naked zipbus driver, "Is there a general alert?" But my voice was drowned in tunnel roars and I had to repeat it louder.

He heard me and yelled back, "Ain't none I know about. That first lot was incoming freight with guard tanks. This stuff now is just staff cars – a bunch of (bleeping) bigwigs. You can't never tell what them (bleepards) is up to." The driver hadn't turned around until he said the last. He did now and abruptly realized he was talking to an officer. He went white with shock and whipped back, looking rigidly straight.

Riffraff, I thought. Lombar is right. Trash like this driver ought to be exterminated. But I didn't take it up. I was too impatient to get at that platoon commander.

We finally got to the Camp Endurance outlet and went through the heavy security barricade. There had never been an escape from Spiteos but this would be the logical route – all other Spiteos exits were sealed solid with stone.

The black-uniformed barricade guards double-checked my identoplate, holding blasters pointed at me the while. A gray service uniform is suspect always but I was (bleeped) if I would ever don the shabby black of the Apparatus troops.

The platoon commander who had been assigned with his men to guard Heller was named Snelz. He and his platoon were barracked in Camp Endurance but sent their guard details into the fortress for duty watches. As I did not want Snelz alerted, I said I was just going to the camp club. I knew where Snelz had his quarters.

The officers lived in small bunkers, like animal caves, along the north side of the camp, dug into the hill. It was pretty dark along there. Scraps of music and echoes from a brawl seeped up from the camp along with a fetid stink.

I saw the cave number ahead. There was a light leak underneath the closed door so Snelz would be there. A couple of big boulders stood beside the entrance. And I am afraid my attention was so thoroughly on the light leak that I didn't see the sentry.

Apparatus troops may parade and all that but they are not like the Army. Criminals, the worst riffraff of the planets, they tend to hide even on casual duty. It is either a trait they get from the Apparatus or the Apparatus gets from them. They never do anything straightforward.

They also have entirely different regulations. They can be killed by their officers without censure. This places any guard in a quandary. He either tries to do his duty of protecting his superior – and maybe die in that – or he fails to protect his officer and the officer kills him.

This one made a mistake: he played it for his officer. When I was eight feet from that door, expecting nothing, the sentry leaped up and lunged in full attack!

I am pretty fast. Otherwise I would have died in my tracks!

The blastgun barrel was into my stomach with violence!

I hardly even saw the man behind it.

With a roll to the side I made the barrel shoot by. I brought my right hand down on the back of the sentry's neck!

He staggered and it gave me my chance.

As he fell, I snatched the gun barrel and got the weapon out of his hands.

His boots drove at my shins and I reeled with the impact.

A green beam of light from the camp flashed as a distant vehicle turned. I saw clearly for the first time that it was a sentry and not an assassin.

But you can't let someone get away with that! Not an attack on an officer.

I reversed the gun and drove the butt against his skull! There was a dull, crushing sound. I hit again just to make sure. He lay there bleeding. He didn't move.

So far, good. And now for Snelz.

The thick door would have masked the sounds of the fight. I stepped over the sentry's body and approached. The thing to do in such a situation, where one is trying to enforce authority and gain respect is play it very bold.

I simply opened the door and walked in. Such a casual act would make him think it was a friend.

He must have. He was sitting at the table in his shirt sleeves, playing twelve-sided dice with himself. Over in a bunk, sleeping peacefully, was one of the camp prostitutes; her clothes lay all over the floor and she looked exhausted. The place stank of spent passion.

When one is really trained, one can reconstruct a situation in a fraction of a second. Snelz had had money.

The first thing he had done was call in a prostitute. He was practicing with six twelve-sided dice so the next thing he planned to do was call in at what they laughingly called a "club" and try to clean out his fellow guard officers to make up what the prostitute had cost him.

Snelz looked up casually, thinking probably that it was some friend intent on getting a loan. He suddenly registered who it was and went white!

Now, duels between officers are not unknown. But Apparatus officers are such swine, they don't duel. They simply murder. And where a General Services officer is concerned, when it comes to a fight with Apparatus troop commanders, they don't even bother to count the bodies.