It was the dark of the moon. The lights of the cage area had been turned out. The sentry had been told to stay elsewhere.

Brown Limper sat on the ground. Terl crouched close to the bars. Lars Thorenson, using a tiny masked light to occasionally resort to his dictionary, sat between them.

Their voices were very low. There must be no possibility of any of this being overheard. Tonight was the big one!

Terl's claws twitched and little surges of energy ran through him. This conference was so important, its successful outcome so vital to his plans, he was having trouble breathing. Yet he must sound indifferent, casual, helpful (a new word he had learned). Conflicting impulses had to be sealed off, such as reaching through the bars (which he had de-electrified, unbeknownst to them, by using the inside remote control hidden in the stones); the pleasure of tearing them with claws was very, very subordinate to what he was attempting tonight. He made himself tensely concentrate on the business at hand.

Brown Limper was relating in whispers that he had succeeded in exposing blatant scandal in the Council. He had taken each of the four other Senior Mayors aside and shown them certain recordings, and they had realized their conduct was a total violation of their own laws. Each had looked at himself performing perversions he had recently been introduced to by the Brigante women, as many as four women at a time, and had agreed with shame he was a potential disgrace to the government. (Lars had trouble finding “shame” in the Psychlo dictionary but at last discovered it in the archaic section as an old Hockner word, obsolete.)

A resolution appointed Brown Limper Staffor Executive for the Council, assisted by the Secretary (who could sign his name after much drilling but who otherwise could not read). The entire authority of the Council now reposed in one Brown Limper Staffor as Senior Mayor Planet from here on out and forevermore as the most deserving and competent Councilman. The others had packed and gone home. Brown Limper's word was now law for the whole planet.

Terl would have thought some note of elation would be detectable. That was how he would have felt. He whispered an approval and a commendation on how statesmanlike this conduct was. But Brown Limper did not brighten. “Is there something else I could help you with?” whispered Terl.

Brown Limper drew a long breath, almost a sigh of despair. He had drawn up a list of criminal charges against that Tyler.

“Good,” said Terl in a very low voice. “You now have the power to handle him. Are they strong charges?”

“Oh, yes,” whispered Brown Limper, brightening. “He interrupted a Council-ordered removal of a tribe, kidnapped the Coordinators, murdered some of the tribesmen, stole their goods, and violated their tribal rights.”

“I should think,” whispered Terl, “that that was serious enough.”

“There's even more,” said Brown Limper. “He ambushed a Psychlo convoy and mercilessly slaughtered it, gave no quarter, and stole their vehicles.”

“You have proof of all this?” whispered Terl.

“Witnesses from the tribe are right here. And picto-recorder pictures of the ambush are being shown nightly at the Academy right over there in the hills. Lars has made copies.”

“I should think all that is more than adequate to bring about justice,” said Terl. The word “justice” was another one they had to look up in the translations going back and forth.

“There's even more,” said Brown Limper. “When he turned over the two billion Galactic credits found at the compound, it was over three hundred credits short. That's theft, a felony.”

Terl gasped. He wasn't gasping at the shortage. He was gasping at two billion Galactic credits. It made the coffins he supposed were in the cemetery on Psychlo mere kerbango change.

He needed a few minutes to sort this out and he told Lars he needed a fresh breathe-gas cartridge for his mask. Lars got him one, not noticing the electrification switch had been reversed. Terl had to flip his remote, which he did in the nick of time to prevent an electrocution.

As he fitted the new cartridges in place, Terl thought furiously. Old Numph? Must have been. Why, the bumbling idiot wasn't so bumbling after all! He'd had other swindles going for...thirty years?...must be! Two billion Galactic credits! Suddenly Terl updated his plans. He knew exactly what he could do with this. Those two billion were going into three or four sealed coffins marked “radiation killed” so they never would be opened and they were going to go right into his cemetery. He had had slightly less workable plans. He abandoned them and a whole new panorama spread before him, one that not only could not fail but also would be enormously profitable. All in a flash he had things rearranged. A plan far safer than he had had. Far more workable. No desperation in it.

The close, dark conference got going again.

“What,” whispered Terl, “is your problem really then?” He knew what it was exactly. This idiot couldn't lay his paws on the animal Tyler!

Brown Limper sagged once more. “It’s one thing to have charges. It 's quite another to get my hands on Tyler."

"Hmm," said Terl, hoping he sounded very thoughtful and considerate (a new word Terl had looked up). “Let me see. Ah. Hmm. The operating principle here is to attract him to the area.” This was just common security chief technology. “You can't go out and find him as he is elusive or too well protected, so the right thing to do is to lure him here, away from protection, and then pounce.”

Brown Limper sat up with a sudden surge of hope. What a brilliant idea!

“The last time he was active here,” whispered Terl, keeping the twitches down to a minimum, “was when we did a transshipment firing. If another transshipment firing were done and he knew about it, he would be here in a flash. Then you could pounce.”

Brown Limper saw that clearly.

“But,” said Terl, “you have another problem too. He is using company property. Company planes, company equipment. Now if you personally owned all that, you would really have him on grand theft.”

Brown Limper got lost. Lars repeated it and clarified it. Brown Limper couldn't quite grasp it.

“And,” whispered Terl, staying very calm, “he is using the planet. Now I don't know whether you know that the Intergalactic Mining Company paid the imperial Psychlo government trillions of credits for this planet. It is company property!”

Lars had to look up things in both the Psychlo and an old English dictionary to get across how much was a trillion and then had to write it for Brown Limper. At last Brown Limper could at least grasp that it was an awful lot of money.

“But the planet,” said Terl, “is now mostly mined out.” This was a flagrant falsehood but these two wouldn't know that. A planet wasn't “mined out” until you were almost through the crust to the liquid core. “I just so happens that it is now worth only a few billion credits.” It was still worth about forty trillion. Crap, he'd sure have to cover his tracks on this one! But it was briliant.

“I am,” whispered Terl, “the resident agent and representative of the company and authorized to legally dispose of its property.” What a lie! Oh, would he have to cover his tracks. “You realized that, of course. The animal Tyler did, which was why he kept me alive.”

“Oh!” whispered Brown Limper. “That had puzzled me! He is so bloodthirsty I couldn't understand how he let you live when he murdered the Chamcos that very same day.”

“Well, now you know his secret,” said Terl. “He himself was trying to negotiate with me to buy the Earth branch of Intergalactic Mining and the planet. That's why he feels he can go around using company equipment and stamping all over the globe. Of course I wouldn't hear of it, knowing his bad character.” (The last was another word Terl had looked up.)