"The Chief of the Apparatus would kill us!" said Faht Bey.

Heller reversed the hand blastgun and pointed it at their faces. "I think there will be some changes on Voltar when I return," said Heller. "But if there are not, you can always say you were forced to do it at gunpoint."

The officers looked nervously at that gun.

"All Voltar personnel on Earth," said Heller, "are transferred as of this moment to the Fleet with similar ranks and ratings. And you will get Fleet pay."

That stirred them. The Apparatus personnel were paid hardly anything, and Fleet pay was much more.

"Then I get paid too?" said Prahd, standing with his respirator.

"You get paid too," said Heller.

Oh, Gods, what a mess he was making! Prahd was officially dead! And many of the rest of them had nonperson status—condemned criminals, the lot!

"Do you know," said Faht Bey, "that many of us have no civil status at all?"

"I suspected that. But under the regulations of the Fleet, a Royal officer operating independently in unconquered areas can recruit and induct crews of any kind and grant them a full amnesty. Your civil rights would be restored."

They looked at him with their mouths open and then looked at one another.

Suddenly Faht Bey jerked his head at me. "That doesn't include him?"

"No, it certainly does not," said Heller.

"What's going to happen to him?" said Faht Bey. "He mortgaged this base. He's guilty of crime after crime. He doesn't go free, does he?"

"I am taking him to Voltar for trial," said Heller. He pointed at Utanc/Gaylov. "I will take that creature's testimony, and with everything else he has done, I think the courts will make short work of Soltan Gris."

They suddenly began to cheer, and even the cordwooded crew began to yell with delight. The hangar practically exploded with their joyous shouts. At length Faht Bey looked around and shouted, "Do we accept his deal?"

The din was deafening!

"Then untie us so we can get to work!" cried Faht Bey. "We got to get this place so it looks like the Fleet!"

I glowered. Turncoats. Riffraff. After all I had done for them!

But I would have the last laugh. None of these poor fools knew that Lombar controlled Voltar now.

I must go along with this. I must pretend that I was done in. I'd even look like I was cooperating.

Heller's actions would not be condoned. They thought I was their prisoner. Actually, they were mine.

I would manage it so that I would be taking this Royal officer they were so stupidly applauding back to his death. And their own demise would soon follow! They were double-crossing Lombar Hisst, who now controlled Voltar.

Just before the crack of dawn, Heller went over to the field and flew the tug in. He brought it down through the illusion, which was back on again. Despite the extremely narrow limits of the hangar, he actually turned it horizontal and landed it on its belly over to the side.

The cat heard the voice of the Countess Krak and came out of the airlock like a launched torpedo, yowling something dreadful. The Countess Krak had been guarding me. The cat hit her in the chest and she told it hello and petted it, distracting her attention. But it didn't do me much good. I was still tied to the chair. The whole scene was very sickening. The base personnel had been standing around, waiting for the tug to come in. I had never realized before that they were, all of them, exiles, convicted of crimes large and small and banished to this place for life. I overheard remarks like "Oh, think of seeing Modon again," and "Imagine once more being able to walk the streets of Flisten cities and not having to hide," and in general, "Oh, think of being able to go home!"

Some of them found some paint and put the symbol of the Fleet, a circle around a diagonal bar, in gold against pale blue, over the Apparatus "bottle" of their shoulder patches.

Heller was undermining this whole base!

A perfectly good lot of criminals were going completely bad!

Well, a lot of good it would do them. The REAL action was

ahead of him when he collided with Lombar's coup.

Once the tug had landed, there was a lot of talk when they saw its stern. They had hated the assassin pilots even worse than they had hated the Antimancos, and they were highly condemnatory of what had happened to the tug. Two guards came over to relieve Krak in watching me. She went to the stern of the tug to look. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

"Oh, Jettero," she said, "they could have killed you."

He was standing with the ship-repair chief. "It's just a few dented housings, dear. The cable electrode ends are just fused to the sleeves. Link here says he can repair it in just a couple of days."

"Oh, but Jettero—if it had hit the hull!" said the Countess Krak. "My, but I'm glad I have the means to get you into a safer sort of life."

"What do you mean?" said Jettero.

I knew she meant the forgeries. She thought he would be appointed to the Royal Staff at Palace City, "freed from the absences and perils of the Fleet," if he successfully completed this mission. She also thought that she would get a Royal pardon and have her family estates restored. But she was in for a terrible surprise. When she resurrected those fakes from wherever she had hidden them and tried to get the emperor to sign them, she and Heller would be seized and executed for forgery of a Royal signature.

"I can't tell you," said the Countess Krak. "It's a secret. But I can assure you, I simply do not intend to live my life with people shooting at my husband left and right! What would the children think?"

"Are there children?" said Heller.

"No, not yet, but there certainly will be. And they're entitled to a real, live father. I think we should go home as soon as possible."

The repair chief said he had the tools and could make the parts. Heller and Krak went into the ship and were gone for some time. When they came out they had changed their clothes and although what she was wearing was not too unearthly, it was obvious to me that she must have left the bulk of her wardrobe in the posh quarters in the aft part of the tug.

Faht Bey waddled up to Heller. "What do we do with the prisoners, sir?" He had never called me "sir," the rotten turncoat.

"Throw the Russian into a detention cell. Hold on to that black-jowled Grabbe-Manhattan man. We're going over to the hospital and we'll take this Gris traitor with us."

Prahd was still there and his car was out at the barracks. They prodded me along and shortly we arrived at the hospital.

It obviously wasn't their first priority but they put me in an operating room and strapped me down.

Nurse Bildirjin, my latest wife, came in. She regarded me as she would waste in a trash can. She simply banged an anesthetic mask on my face and that was all I knew about that.

It must have been midafternoon when I came to in a hospital room. I was strapped down on the bed, the cat was sitting on my chest, keeping a hateful eye on me, and Nurse Bildirjin was standing by the window.

She saw I was awake. She threw two lead pellets at me. "They missed," she said.

"Missed!" I protested. "I distinctly felt them hit me!"

"They missed any vital organ. If you had any sense of decency, you would have stood a little further to the left. Then I would be a self-respecting widow."

"You (bleepch)!" I said.

The cat snarled, lifting a set of claws to rake me.

"Would you like to see your son?" said Nurse Bildirjmr

For the first time I noticed that her stomach was flat. She must have just gotten out of confinement. I hastily counted up on my fingers. That time she had jumped me after my return from New York was definitely not nine months ago.

She had gone out and now she returned with something wrapped in blankets labelled Hospital Nursery. She tipped it toward me.