Faht Bey was in the hangar. I told him I wanted a drill. He argued with me, saying it would interrupt everybody's work. I was just trying to explain to him that we were now in danger from Heller when Captain Stabb, seeing us shaking our fists at each other, came over.

I thought the Antimanco was going to take sides and defend me. But he was in a very sour mood. He paid no attention to what we were talking about.

Captain Stabb said, "I'm facing a mutiny!"

Faht Bey didn't want anything to do with mutinies and he cut out of there at what speed his fat hulk was capable of, leaving me to face Stabb.

"You're a good officer, Gris, if there is any such thing as a good officer. But you can't hold tidbits up in front of a crew and then tell them they can't have them. That ain't right. You as good as promised them they could kill that Royal officer and no questions asked, and then you call it off, just like that. It's ruined morale, that's what it's done. And besides, it isn't fair."

"What can I do?" I said.

"They're standing up for their rights. If they don't get them, I can't answer for it. So you better agree to their demands."

"What are their rights?"

"To go pirating, of course."

"Look," I said. "Be reasonable. Those assassin pilots get nervous when you take the tug out."

"Oh, that thing," said Stabb, dismissing the tug with a flick of his thick hand. "It ain't armed. It won't carry loot. Who's talking about that tug?" He beckoned.

I followed him to a recess in the main hangar. It was really a storeroom where decades of junk and crates had accumulated.

Stabb steered over to one side of the vast hill of debris. He pointed at some very large, age-discolored cases. There were an awful lot of them.

"You know what that is?"

I hadn't the faintest idea.

"That's a 'line-jumper.' Now, I been busy while certain others neglected their duty and I looked up how it came to get here. It was totally dismantled, crated and freighted here from Voltar. And," he added impressively, "it ain't never been assembled."

"What," I said, "is a 'line-jumper'?"

"It's a blazing wonder, that's what it is. They were developed by the Voltarian Army. They use them. They can pick up a hundred-ton piece of artillery, jump the enemy lines and set it and its ammunition down way back of the enemy lines and bomb them from the rear."

I was all adrift. We had no enemy lines to jump, no artillery to move.

"I think," said Stabb, "that somebody in your Apparatus office, maybe even your chief, had one of those bright ideas that officers get sometimes and figured this could be used to shift huge quantities of drugs across borders on this planet. So they got one from the Army and shipped it down here in pieces."

"Sounds like the very thing," I said, looking at the discolored cases with new respect.

"Yeah," said Stabb, "but like a lot of officers' ideas that get men killed and foul up operations, it wouldn't work. It lifts its cargo on traction beams and carries it. The cargo is totally exposed and can be picked up by the most primitive radar. It only operates in atmosphere—there's minimal pressure protection in the flight deck—and it can't go up very high. So they never assembled it."

"Then it's worthless," I said.

"Oh, no," said Captain Stabb. "It's just about the greatest pirate tool you ever heard of. It could pick up a whole village on its tractor beams and fly off with it. You could pick up a whole bank, loot it at ten thousand feet and just drop the rubbish. If it ain't carrying cargo, it is undetectable. So it ain't worthless. It's priceless!"

He patted a box. "I could even devise a curtain to cover cargo and it could be used to run guns to revolutionaries. There's a fortune in this thing! But no officer ever asked no bright, dedicated subofficer what could be done with it. The Army sprayed the artillery with absorbo-coat. I don't think the Apparatus knew that. It wasn't in the directions. Experience is what counts in the long run. Not book learning."

I had a marvelous inspiration on how to end this mutiny. "How long will it take to assemble this thing?"

"Well, it's all dismantled down to the last plate and adhesion joint. If we work hard in our time off from shooting dice and drinking—maybe a couple hours a day—it would only take us a few months."

"Do it," I said. "By all means, do it!"

"You're a great fellow, Gris, even if you are an officer. We will show you we mean business, that we're sincere. If we ever get it finished and operating, we'll cut you in on a handsome share of the loot." He clapped me on the back in good fellowship and rumbled off to tell his crew.

I was much relieved. I had certainly handled that mutiny in an expert way.

But Fate was not being kind, even so. I had no more than entered the tunnel which led back to my office than I was suddenly stopped by Faht Bey.

"There's something I better report," he said. I thought, oh Gods, I knew I shouldn't have come into this place.

"We're having to step up our heroin production," said Faht Bey.

"Why? You're already running at top speed!"

"I know," said Faht Bey. "I hate to have to tell you this but there's a twenty-five pound bag unaccounted for."

"So?" I said. (Bleep) these bookkeeping details.

"The security guard says it has been stolen by someone."

"Oh, somebody just miscounted!"

"No," said Faht Bey. "It has never happened before and this is the third time in the past five days. Somebody is stealing heroin supplies and in quantity! And it's happening right here inside the base."

"Well, step up production," I said impatiently. My Gods, I was in no mood for more problems.

"Just so you know," he said, fastening a peculiar eye on me. "We'll step up production."

So I had also solved that.

That would teach me to move around the hangar! You had to be armed with more than a blastick! Too bad you just couldn't throw a grenade at all these problems you met! All this thinking on top of all this grief was making my head ache.

Now that Heller knew there was a plot against his life, I had to keep a very close eye on him. He might come over to the base and try to kill me.

But, as usual, the things he did didn't make much sense.

In the ensuing days after he returned from Connecticut, Heller devoted a lot of time to studying. He was covering the mimeographed class lectures of his courses to date. He studied in his office at the Empire State Building; he probably even studied in his suite—but who could tell what he did in his suite, thanks to the interference. But what worried me most was his studying in the lobby of the Gracious Palms.

On an evening, he would sit half-masked from the lobby by palm fronds but still in sight of the front door. Why he chose such a place to study, only Heller knew, for he was constantly interrupted.

He was affecting a black, silk-collared tuxedo in the lobby. The shirt had puffs of lace on the front of it and the silk cuffs were held in place with diamonds. How he got them, I don't know, maybe he had them built, but he was wearing black, patent-leather baseball spikes!

He'd get started on a lecture on differential equations or some such silliness and he'd get no farther than a page when some diplomat or another would wander over and he'd get up and shake hands and pass the time of day. The UN was apparently just starting session and there were lots of customers, all of different shades and hues.

They didn't say anything intelligent and for a bit I thought they must be talking in code. Things like "How are you, old boy?" from the diplomats and things like "Just ripping," from Heller. Unintelligible. And some diplomat, with a lift of his eyebrows, would say, "Getting any yourself?" and Heller would say, "The important people have the priorities." And they'd laugh in a sort of knowing way. Incomprehensible.