I checked the cell carefully. There was no possible way to get out or to get in and there was no way anyone outside it could speak with anyone in it, and vice versa.

I went back, and with the guards standing ready, I burned the knot apart with a small disintegrator and began to unwind the safety line off his head. I got down to his mouth.

Crobe said, "I'll have the law on you for this!"

I was utterly amazed! Here I had saved his life. I had even become a claimant for him and put my own life at risk.

Then I understood: Crobe might be a doctor but he didn't know anything about law. He did not know, for instance, that I could now kill him without his thereafter being able to sue me. Further, if he knew so little about law, he didn't know ranks or how important I was. I recognized that I had better get a book and show him before I unwrapped anything else.

There was a crew library near to hand. I went in. I looked. There was a long shelf utterly covered with dust. Nobody had looked at these books for decades. I blew and when I was through coughing I read the titles.

It was all one series of volumes! More than forty of them, very thick. The title of the set was Voltar Confederacy Combined Compendium Complete, including Space Codes, Penal Codes, Domestic Codes, Royal Proclamations, Royal Orders, Royal Procedures, Royal Precedence, Royal Successions Complete with Tables and Biographies, Court Customs, Court History, Royal Land Grants, Rights of Aristocracy, Planetary Districts of 110 Planets, Local Laws, Local Customs, Aristocratic Privileges and Various Other Matters. Impressive!

I realized it would scare Crobe half to death. I promptly put the whole set on a cart and wheeled it to the new cell and stuffed it into the shelves. Why engage in chitchat? Let him find his own reasons he was being so ungrateful!

I went back to get Crobe. He was glaring so hard, I decided not to take a chance of completing the unwrap there. I dumped him on a cart and rolled it into the cell.

I said, "You will get out of here when you know Eng­lish and decide to obey my orders!"

I picked up the loose end of the safety line and gave it a hefty yank.

He spun like a top!

Right across the floor.

His body even hummed, it was turning so fast.

I kicked the cart out of the cell.

I locked up the cell door.

I slammed the new armor-steel corridor door.

I spun the combination.

Only I knew that combination. Nobody could get in. Crobe couldn't get out.

My sigh of relief came with a gusty rush. In due time, if I needed it, I had a secret weapon I could send against Heller. At the least sign of resurgence or success in the U. S., I would launch the deadly Crobe.

Until then, he was safe and I was safe.

I looked in through the port. He had untangled him­self. He was staring at the bookshelves. And just as I had hoped, his interest quickened. He was picking up Psychiatric Stew.

With a gay and jaunty step, I went upon my way.

Life had taken a new and pleasant upturn once again.

After a marvelous breakfast served by Karagoz and a waiter, who crossed the floor only on their knees, it occurred to me that I had better check up on Heller and Krak just to make sure they were still failing.

With a pitcher of hot sira, I leaned back in a comfortable chair and watched the two viewers.

Heller was doing a whole bunch of figures at his desk in New York. All sorts of equations, mostly chem­ical. No threat there: he could do equations until the sky fell in and it wouldn't disturb the planet in the least.

I became interested in what the Countess Krak was doing. She was in the secretary boudoir and the door to the office itself was closed. The place was all festooned with cupids prancing around the wallpaper. But that wasn't what she was looking at directly. It was the cat.

She was down on her knees and she was teaching him to do backflips. He was working very hard to get them just right.

"Elegance is the watchword, Mister Calico," she was saying. "Now let's do it again. Saunter along-one, two, three, four-without a care in the world. Then FLIP! Takes the audience by surprise. Now here we go again: one, two, three, four..."

What a silly woman! She was still talking to it in Standard Voltarian and it was still an Earth cat! Couldn't possibly understand her.

And if this was all she was doing, it was certainly no threat to me.

The cat must have done a perfect flip. She petted it and Mister Calico purred.

"All right," said the Countess. "That's enough acrobatics for today. Now let's review yesterday's lesson. Go get a newspaper."

She opened the door a crack. That cat wasn't so smart after all. Had to have doors opened for it.

The cat went out into the office. It sprang up on a bar stool. A stack of newspapers was there. The cat caught the edge of one in its teeth and worried it off the bar. The paper hit the floor with a plop. The cat jumped down and again bit into the corner of it and, walking sideways, got it through the boudoir door.

The Countess closed the door. "That's fine." She knelt on the floor. "Now turn it over so I can read it."

The cat, with teeth and paws, turned the newspaper over.

It wasn't really a newspaper. It was the weekly news magazine, the National Expirer. I guess the cat liked spicy reading.

It didn't go smoothly. The Countess flinched back. She gave the cat an absent pat. She leaned forward, reading the front page story. It said:

IS MISS AMERICA SAFE

FROM WHIZ KID RAPE?

This probing question is being passionately asked today by rape experts.

After his theft of Atlantic City, the thing has raised its ugly head: Is the reigning Miss America, only just crowned this autumn at Atlantic City, now safe from threatened Whiz Kid ravishment?

Many experts predict that the Whiz Kid will not be able to curtail his ardor now that Miss America is so easily in his clutches.

Others, reviewing the measurements of Miss America, agree that no oversexed normal male would be able to resist her charms.

No less an authority than the press agent of Miss America himself stated, "We have tried to hide her photographs from his view and we have her in a narrow bed that won't take two, but predictions of an early roll in the hay are rife."

The story was accompanied by a full-length, half-page picture of a gorgeous, half-naked blonde showing a yard of leg enticingly.

The Countess Krak sat back on her haunches. She was staring at the photograph. "Oh, dear," she muttered. "She is beautiful. Oh, dear, and we're not even married yet!"

She suddenly folded the paper and shoved it under the edge of the rug. She said, "Cat! Call Mamie!"

There was a phone on the side table of the couch. The cat jumped up beside it. I was amazed. A cat using a telephone? But then I saw it wasn't remarkable at all. The phone was a speaker phone and all you had to do was punch a button and it came on with a dial tone. Then it had a row of call buttons on a panel beside it and all you had to do was touch one button and it automatically dialled a whole number. Anybody can do that. Just two buttons.

"President and General Manager Boomp here," came out of the phone speaker.

"Meow," said the cat. Well, at least it didn't say "Hello" in Voltarian. That would have been a Code break for sure!

The Countess gave the cat a stroke and sat down on the couch. "Hello, dear. This is Joy. You know that dinner you were inviting us to attend this week? Well, I just called to say Jettero is very, very busy and can't possibly come down to Atlantic City."

"Oh, that's too bad."

Krak said, "How are things, dear?"

"Oh, just fine," said Mamie. "That (bleeped) Mafia had all the gambling devices rigged and they were paying off only to their own henchmen and shills, but we reversed the policy and only let popular people win-pretty girls we can get good pictures of and such. You should see them flocking in."