He was waiting for me at the hangar end.

"Since when," I asked him acidly, "am I responsible for everyone on this base?"

"You sent for him!" said Faht Bey. "You had him brought from Voltar. And now look!"

Crobe was halfway up the hangar wall, hanging by his fingernails.

On the hangar floor, fifty feet below him, were the four assassin pilots and the five Antimancos. And they were furious!

They were yelling curse words up at Doctor Crobe, the like of which I had never heard before. Unprintable! An awful din!

"I won't let them shoot at him. He's only two feet away from an earthquake stability box," said Faht. "They might hit it and cave the whole place in."

True enough: the small box which kept an invisible bar beam going to brace two walls apart was right by his head.

I didn't want to go near the assassin pilots: they are pretty dangerous people to be around even when they're calm. And right then they were definitely not calm. They were howling and jumping up and down.

Faht Bey's hand pushing against my back propelled me into the scene.

"What's this?" I said.

A stream of vituperation sprayed at me from all sides. Only with difficulty could I piece together what had happened.

Doctor Crobe had lifted the detention cell key off the guard. Sometime during the night he had crept out of the cell where he should have been studying English. An assassin pilot had awakened at the cut of a guard bayonet and had the bleeding slash to prove it.

Good Gods, Doctor Crobe sure did not have very good sense, to attack an assassin pilot!

Ploddingly, plugging away, I kept asking them if Crobe had volunteered any slightest explanation for this breach of good manners. Perhaps if I could get to the bottom of this, it could be handled.

No one at ground level had the necessary informa­tion. In fact, they were making such a din, I doubt they understood my line of interrogation.

There was only one thing for it, I realized in a spurt of genius: ask Doctor Crobe.

I got a small bullhorn and focused it on him. "Why were you cutting on an assassin pilot?" I shouted up at him.

He had hold of the beam box itself now. He looked down with his wild, zealot eyes. His voice, coming from way up there on the wall, was pretty thin.

"I was just studying English!" he shouted down in his clumsy Voltarian. "I was only doing what you told me to do, Officer Gris."

That caused more smoke and profanity down where I was. Hastily, I yelled back, "I didn't tell you to cut anybody's throat!"

"You gave me texts on psychology and psychiatry as part of my reading assignment! They say man has a reptile brain in the lower middle of his skull. That was news to me, and I was only trying to find out! Why all this furor over somebody just trying to do his homework?"

Well, he had a point. The assassin pilots and the Antimancos didn't see it that way.

"You gave him some books that told him to do that?" snarled an assassin pilot.

I thought it prudent to change the subject. "If we can get him down from there, he can show you it is just a clinical matter."

They surged at me. I got my back to the wall and a blastick out. "Look," I said, "why don't you go someplace and have a conference and cool off. I'll get him down and we can discuss it like gentlemen."

They looked at the 800-kilovolt blastick. They looked up at Crobe.

"Later," said the assassin pilot.

They left, snarling considerably, leaving me and Faht Bey.

I yelled up at Crobe, "You can come down now."

"I can't. I am certain I will fall," he yelled back.

"We'll rig a safety net!" I yelled. "Hold on."

The hangar crew had been very inconspicuous during the argument. Faht Bey dug them out from behind things and made them get a net. They stretched it out below Crobe.

"You can jump now," I yelled up at him.

"My hands won't let go!" he yelled back.

I told Faht Bey and the hangar crew to wait right there. I went up the tunnel to my gun case. I selected out a needle stun rifle and came back.

Faht Bey took one look at it. "Don't shoot up there! You could hit that electronic-beam support box he's holding on to."

I told him icily, "You are questioning my marksman­ship. I can hit a songbird at half a mile with this. How can I miss Crobe at fifty feet?"

I put the stun rifle on its lowest setting. The hangar crew around the safety net covered up their heads. Faht Bey ran all the way to the office and peeked back out.

Kneeling, I braced the weapon.

I took perfectly accurate aim. Right on Crobe's right hand as it clutched the box.

I fired!

CRASH!

The box exploded!

Down came Crobe!

Down came ten tons of rock!

Smoke and dust spiralled in the gloom.

Faht Bey hit the clanging general emergency alarm button.

DEAFENING!

From all over the base people came streaming in to man the guns.

Faht Bey quickly redirected them into an emergency damage and rescue operation.

They began to dig the hangar crew out.

Crobe they found in the bottom of the net where he had landed safely, only to be at once bombarded by rock following him down.

Apparently the beam box had shorted and the beams had ceased to support the walls they proofed against the numerous earthquakes of the area, and slabs of rock had sheered away from old faults.

These people were making a lot of to-do about nothing. The hangar walls were intact except for a few pockmark holes a yard or less in diameter. No equipment had been damaged unless you counted one safety net. There wasn't even anybody dead-only a fractured skull or two, and Prahd could patch those up.

But everybody passing me was giving me a most undeserved glare.

I had found what was wrong. The power pack in the needle stun rifle had not been recharged for two years and, low-powered, had missed his hand and shot low. My marksmanship was not in question. But nobody would stop long enough to hear the explanation.

They were very unappreciative. After all, I had gotten Crobe down. Not even Bugs Bunny could have done it any better.

I had retired to my room after it became plain, by certain remarks, that I was in the way. They had to get the wounded to the hospital and the beam box repaired quick in case there was an earthquake, and the floor was pretty messy. After all, they were professionals and I was above all such menial work.

Thus it was that just while I was enjoying a delicious dinner of cerkez tavugu-which is boiled chicken, Circassian style, with a sauce of crushed walnuts and red pepper-served by a somewhat beat-up but very obsequious staff, Faht Bey had the effrontery to buzz me again.

"They're ready for your conference," he said.

"Some other time," I said.

"Then my vote is that we feed your Doctor Crobe to a disintegrator bin."

"Wait, wait," I said. I thought very rapidly. I was well aware of the havoc Crobe could wreak: he was a very valuable asset in any Apparatus operation. Heller was very sneaky and he might recover or get lucky and then my neck would be out. Reluctantly, I said, "I will be right down."

The conference in the crew's quarters was attended by very grim faces. I walked in, blastick in my palm, taking no chances. I didn't sit down. It was not that I was invited to. It was simply very plain that the best place for a back was against a wall.

They had Doctor Crobe. Somewhat bandaged-most likely by himself-he was crouched on the floor, and there were three guards with three guns pointing at his head.

"I vote death," said the first assassin pilot who had been cut.

"Seconded," said the second assassin pilot.

"That settles it," said Captain Stabb. "The verdict is hanged by the teeth until he falls in a pot of boiling electronic fire."