Lombar wanted me to remind you now and then.

And under that formal social script was drawn a dagger! A dagger with blood on it! A dagger with blood on it that was dripping!

I went cold as I burst into sweat.

Who could have put it there? Was it Melahat? Was it Karagoz? Could it be Faht Bey? The hangar chief? Jimmy “The Gutter”? Heller? No, no, no! Not Heller: he would be the last one Lombar would use! The small boy who had been fanning me? No, no, I had had him in sight all morning.

Where were they now?

Was I being watched this minute?

All thought of hunting vanished.

I was the hunted!

With a great effort, I made myself think. Something was obviously expected. Somebody believed I was not doing my job. And if that happened, according to Lombar’s last remark, the whoever-it-was had direct orders to kill me!

I knew I must do something. Make an effort, a show of it. And fast.

I had it!

I would tell Captain Stabb to start another rumor about Heller!

I let the shotgun fall. I rushed through the back of the closet. I got the passageway door open and catapulted down it to find Stabb.

The Antimanco was nowhere around. But something else was.

The warplanes!

Two of them!

They must have arrived during the night!

They were ugly ships. A bit bigger than the tug. They were all armor. They were manned by only two. They were a more compact version of “the gun” which Lombar flew. Deadly ships, cold, black, lethal.

Rather timidly, I approached them. To get here now, when would they have had to leave Voltar? They must have been dispatched the very day Heller had bought the tug to have arrived here by now. Such ships were only a trifle faster than freighters. Lombar must have known about the tug purchase the instant it happened! He knew too much, too quickly. He must have spies planted in every…

A voice sounded behind me and I almost jumped out of my wits!

“We been here for hours, Gris. Where have you been?”

I turned. I was looking at a slate-hard man with slate-hard eyes. There were three others behind him. How had they gotten behind me?

They were in black uniforms and they wore red gloves. They had a red explosion on each side of their collars. And I knew what they were. In the Apparatus they are called assassin pilots. They are used on every major Apparatus battle engagement. They do not fight the enemy. They are there to make sure no Apparatus vessel runs away. If it does, if they only think it is running away, they shoot it down! With riffraff of the type that makes up the Apparatus, such measures are necessary. One has to deal with cowards. One also has to deal with mutiny. The answer is the assassin pilot. The Fleet has no such arrangements.

Their manners compare with their duties. He was omitting “officer” from his form of address to me. He did not offer to shake hands.

“That ship,” and he flung a contemptuous gesture at the tug, “has no call-in beamer on it!”

Every Apparatus ship is required to have a device imbedded in its hull which an assassin ship, with a beam, can activate: it is vital so they can find an erring vessel and shoot it down.

“It was a Fleet vessel,” I said, backing up.

“Listen, Gris, you wouldn’t want me to report you for violations, would you?”

I backed up further. “It was just an oversight.”

He stepped closer. I had never seen colder eyes. “How can anybody expect me to shoot a ship down when I can’t find it? Get a call-in beamer installed in that hull!”

I tried to back up further but the hull of a warplane was at my back. I felt desperate. “I am not under your orders.”

“And we,” he said, “are not under yours!”

The other assassin pilot and the two copilots behind him all nodded as one, with a single jerk of their heads. They were very grim, cold professionals at their trade; they wanted things straight!

It was a bad situation. I would sometimes be in that tug. It was unarmed and unarmored. One single shot from either of these warplanes could turn the Prince Caucalsia into space dust in a fraction of a second.

“So, two orders,” said the assassin pilot. “One: order the hangar chief to install a call-in beamer on that ship’s exterior hull so secretly and in such a place that its crew will never know it is there. Two: I want that ship crippled so that it cannot leave this system on its time drives and try to outrun us.”

“There’s a Royal officer aboard her,” I said.

“Well, decoy him away from the ship so the beamer can be put on the hull. I’ll leave the crippling of her up to you as you’re the best one to get inside her.”

I nodded numbly. I was at a terrible disadvantage. I had left my room so fast I had not taken a gun. I had broken a firm rule never to be around Apparatus people unarmed. And then, I realized, it wouldn’t have done me any good even if I had been armed. They would have complained to Lombar I was refusing his orders.

I nodded nervously.

“Then we’re friends?” he said.

I nodded and offered my hand.

He raised his red-gloved fingers and slapped me across the face, hard, contemptuously.

“Good,” he said. “Do it.”

I raced off to give the secret order to the hangar chief. I raced up the ladder and got Heller to come out.

I took Heller to the hangar map room, out of sight of the tug.

He was in work clothes. He had been doing something inside. His red racing cap was on the back of his head. “Where’d the two ‘guns’ come from?” he asked.

“They’re just guard ships,” I said. “Stationed here. They’ve been away. Nothing to do with the mission.” It gave me a little lift of satisfaction, thinking of what his reaction would be if he knew they were here especially to keep track of his beloved tug and shoot it down if it did anything odd or didn’t return at once from a flight. I only hoped I wouldn’t be aboard when they hit it: an unarmed, unarmored tug wouldn’t stand a chance!

“We will probably be leaving tomorrow,” I said. “While we are near maps, I wanted to show you the U.S. terrain.”

“Hello,” he said, looking at them. “ ‘U.S. Geological Survey.’ It even shows the minerals!”

“And everything even down to the farmhouses,” I said, glad to be able to engage his interest and prevent him from seeing what they were doing in the hangar. “We can make better farmhouse ones, of course, but the minerals are a bonus.

“Now, probably we will be landing in that field there.” And I pointed to the section in southern Virginia I had seen noted on the Lombar orders.

“The town,” I continued, “is named Fair Oakes. See it there? This over here is a better, more detailed map. This is Hamden County. Fair Oakes is the county seat. Now, see this building? That’s the Hamden County Courthouse. The squiggles show it is on a little hill.

“All right,” I said. “Now, pay attention. We will land in this field: it’s a ruined plantation and nobody is ever around. The trees will mask us from any road.

“Now, you will leave the ship there, walk up this path that is indicated, pass this farmhouse, walk up the hill to the back of the courthouse and go in.

“You will be issued your birth certificate — an old clerk will be there even though it is after hours. And then you will walk down this hill and go to the bus station.

“There is a late-night bus. You will take it north to Lynchburg. You will probably change at Lynchburg and then go through Washington, D.C., and up to New York.”

He was being very attentive but looking at the maps. Actually, it was hardly worth explaining what he would be doing after that. The Rockecenter, Jr. false name Lombar had set up for him would draw attention and he’d be spotted. If he registered even at a motel, somebody would be startled enough to call the local press that a celebrity was in town. But it would be no celebrity: just a false name! And then, bang! Rockecenter’s connections would take over. Bye-bye Heller! It was a cunning trap Lombar had laid. There is no Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior!