Cragin didn't interrupt. He knew that had he been sure that she was trying desperately to bluff out a well-staged fake, he would have stopped the whole performance but there was something in the way she had turned from him, had simply started at her work. "I could take a chance now," she said suddenly. "Do you think I should take a chance, Cragin?" She looked full at him. Whatever she was talking about, he knew she was not kidding. "Chance? I'm just a dumb cop, remember?" "I think I could move it. I think I've uncovered the secret of at least Earth's orbit and axis control. It's the balance resultants that worry me ... and if I were wrong--" "According to you, Earth is a dead duck anyway, princess. So go ahead and make a mistake. You fast-talked me into tailing you here. Or I fast-talked myself. But according to your story, you can move the whole damn system and make it grow little men with big ears right from this cozy little spot. O.K. I'm watching." The look in her eyes said she thought of him as something only a little more than a Venusian crag lizard, and then as her hand moved toward a console of circuit stabilizers, the look changed. Her hand stopped where it was. "You haven't been any help so far. I brought you because there was no getting rid of you. But Patrolman, right now we've got trouble. Do your duty or something--" The voice simply said, "You did not obey." Cragin spun around, the Krell barrels coming level. But he found himself completely helpless to press their switches. The mind that had spoken within his own had taken control. * * * * * What Cragin saw was like a man. The similarity continued beyond the shape and size of body; it went further to his dress, and there it stepped backward in time. The wide shoulders supported a cloak of so dark a hue that its outlines seemed to become a part of the space around it; the large, perfectly proportioned body beneath them bore with the same arrogance a uniform of deep scarlet mail which seemed to shimmer although its wearer stood immobile. He wore no space-helmet, nor any weapon that Cragin could see. "You have tampered with a work of the Owners," the voice said, "and have thereby broken their law." His cloak alone moved, as though sheltering a statue in a pre-storm breeze. "That takes a death penalty in your book I suppose," Cragin said. "There is another kind?" "It's a cinch you never heard of civilized society. If there's anything we've got, it's lots of different penalties. But we've got our share of death, too. Ask goldilocks here." "Death is nothing new to the people of Earth," the girl said evenly. "Nor are penalties." "Yet you defied the warning." "Because it might have meant life to us." "Life and death are not yours to direct," the voice said. "That lies solely with the Owners. That is universal." "By what universal right?" The girl's voice rose to the pitch of half anger, half contempt.