I kept very quiet. He did not know Captain Tars Roke had been sent to exile on Calabar. Let him dream. If he ever returned to Voltar, he was dead. Somehow I must stay alive. My feet were hurting me. "If you want to deliver a prisoner that isn't dead, you better get me to a doctor. I'm probably coming down with gangrene or lockjaw."

"That would be a blessing," said Heller. "But what's the matter?"

"My feet. They got infected and have had no care. I'll probably die on you unless you get me to the Earth base."

He sighed. You weren't supposed to kill prisoners on their way to a trial. You were supposed to deliver them alive.

For a fleeting moment I thought he would take the tug to Turkey, for he was standing up.

He lifted the cat off my chest. He began to unwind the ties that held me to the star-pilot seat.

He stood back. "Strip," he said.

For a wild moment I wondered if I should take a chance. There was no gun in his hand. Maybe if I lunged . . .

Just in time I realized he was laying a trap. He wanted an excuse to shoot me.

Shaking, I began to get out of my clothes.

"Phew!" he said. "Blazes, Gris, don't you ever bathe? The air was starting to clean up after the Antimancos, and now smell it."

"It smells all right to me," I said defensively.

"It would to a 'drunk,'" said Heller. "Look at that."

The cat was sneezing!

Heller eyed me with contempt. "Now, pick up those clothes, all of them, and dump them in that disintegrator. No, not your wallet, idiot."

Weakly, I surrendered it. He might find that Squeeza credit card, and that would lead him to discover that I had first kidnapped and then killed the Countess Krak. I felt quite ill.

I threw my ski suit in the disintegrator and followed it with my other clothes. I was naked except for the bandages on my feet.

He wasn't even pointing a gun at me. He herded me into the crew's shower and made me bathe, even wash my hair.

That done, he made me limp into the small crew first-aid room and lie down on the table. He yanked straps tight across my throat and hips and knees. He got out a pair of cutters and I was afraid he was going to torture me. But he was only cutting the bandages off my feet.

"That's pretty bad," he said. "Festered. Whatever were you walking in?"

"Goat dung," I said.

He put on a pair of surgical gloves. It was obvious to me now that torture would begin.

He was holding up one foot and looking at the sole.

He said, "Watch him, cat," and went out. I heard him rummaging in a toolbox. I knew he was getting pincers to pull out my toenails and fingernails one by one and make me talk.

He came back in. He had a couple of small portable instruments. One had a label on it: Metal Analyzer. It had a light. He clicked it on and passed it over the suppurating sole of my foot. He looked at its dial.

"That must have been a very funny goat," he said. "It apparently fed on a diet of copper."

"What?" I said.

"The soles of your feet are full of little tiny slivers of copper. Small as powder, but slivers all the same. Copper is a deadly poison."

A shock went through me. "Prahd! He must have dusted it on the gauze bandages the first day!"

"Prahd Bittlestiffender?" said Heller. "The young cellologist back on Voltar? The one who must have put the bugs in my eye and ear?"

I must watch what I said. I shut my mouth tightly. And then I began to seethe with rage. Prahd had thought it would drive me back and beg to get treated and, under blackmail of making me pay the kaffarah to the violated wives and other things, he would remove the poison barbs, after I had paid.

Heller was working with the other device he had brought. "No, it didn't happen that far back," he said. "This is very recent."

I had a sudden idea. One that might work. "Prahd is at the Earth base. We could fly in and get him to remove those bugs from your head. We could start right now."

He wasn't answering. He was adjusting a dial. It said Paramagnetic, Diamagnetic, Ferromagnetic, on its switches.

"You're lucky," he said. "This copper is alloyed with iron. I think I can get them out."

He was passing the device over the soles of my feet and ankles, very slowly. He looked at it from time to time. The plate on it was getting covered with a reddish metallic fuzz. He wiped the plate off with a cloth and kept at it.

"Prahd must really have it in for you," he said. "But there's no mystery in that. But if he'd pull a trick like that, the only way I'd let him touch me again would be if somebody was holding a gun on him."

He made several more passes. He got no further splinters. He opened a cabinet and got out a neutralizing solution and, using a paint brush, painted my feet and ankles. Then he got some hull putty, sterilized it with a light and kneaded cell-growth cream into it. He put it on my feet so that I had a sort of cast on each one.

Then I suddenly realized his motive in all this: He was making my feet so heavy I would fall faster when he threw me out of the airlock. I recoiled into myself.

He was picking up the first device. "Now let's see if you got any on your hands or anyplace else."

He turned it on. He moved it toward my upper body. I froze in horror. If that detector had certain wavelengths it would show up the tattoo on my chest. That imprint under the right kind of light would make my breast read ROCKECENTER FAMILY SPI!*

* This is the correct spelling. See "Spi" in the Key.—Translator

According to regulations, when a spy was caught red-handed, he could be executed by any officer. All Heller had to do was see that thing and I wouldn't go to trial. He would be totally within his rights to just shoot me!

I watched the light in horror. He was playing it over my fingers. He found a few splinters and with the other device removed them.

My pupils dilated with terror as I watched the onward sweep of that light. He was examining the skin on my stomach.

I silently mouthed a prayer. I tried several Gods and even Jesus Christ. I was inches from death.

The light swept higher.

It played upon my chest.

I closed my eyes tightly. Probably the last thing I would know would be a bullet crashing through my brain.

He had found something on my chest!

I opened one eye. He was reaching for something. I knew it would be his gun.

I looked down.

The light was playing squarely on the spot of the tattoo!

It wasn't glowing.

The light he was using was not the right kind!

I had won my reprieve!

I wondered which God had granted it.

He was picking up a splinter with the other device.

He went to a cabinet and took out a disposable spacer's fatigue suit and threw it at me.

Devils, but that had been a close call! My heart just now resumed beating.

He undid the straps. I wrestled into the suit and stood up. He was motioning for me to go back to the flight area. And I discovered then what he had been up to: Each foot, with that putty now hardened, must have weighed thirty pounds! I could scarcely make my way.

He made me sit in the star-pilot chair. He had a pair of wrist shackles now. He fastened them around and through the arms of the seat and then put them on me. A sudden unreasoning anger took hold of me. How dare he treat me this way? I was his superior officer. I could wriggle out of any charge he brought against me. After all, Lombar Hisst now controlled the whole Voltar Confederacy!

I had to solve the predicament I was in. He didn't know he was dealing with the next Chief of the Apparatus!

"You can't do this to me," I flared. "I've only done my duty."

He looked at me and for the first time I saw real scorn. "Duty? You don't know the meaning of the word, Gris. You think that indulging your own greed and self-aggrandizement comprises duty? Don't sully the word by saying it. Duty has to do with meeting one's moral obligations. I don't see the slightest trace of morality in you. Get one thing straight: You're only sitting there so the cat and I can keep an eye on you. I can put you in suspension with one shot from the medical chest. Would you rather have that?"