But he was laughing, the sound echoing through the burrow, none of the men paying any attention to it. I looked at Pat. "Another toast!" Thorsten's glass had been refilled. "To Ash Holcomb--hired gun and angel of death!" He was laughing at me, and at Pat. He knew, or guessed, and death was lightly hidden by his laughter. * * * * * "_Don't do it, Holcomb!_" Thorsten's voice was ice. I looked at my hands. They were hooked into talons, and I realized that there wasn't a muscle in my body that wasn't tensed and ready to cannon me across the table. I could even hear the snarl rumbling at the base of my throat. I looked to the side. A man with an open holster flap was standing there, his eyes locked on me. "Do what, Harry," I asked casually, "propose another toast?" He looked uncertain for a moment. Then the smile and the laugh came on, and Thorsten was Thorsten again. He didn't know about the chained lightning that was running in my arteries instead of blood. He was a dead man as he sat there, and he didn't know it. In a way, that was funny enough to me to keep waiting. "A toast? It certainly is a night for toasts, isn't it?" Thorsten murmured. Pat hadn't moved, and stopped looking at him. I didn't know if she'd looked at me when I was ready to go for Thorsten's throat--but I didn't think so. Now she smiled. I wonder how much it cost her because her lower lip was gray where she'd had it between her teeth. I had my glass refilled. I nodded toward Pat--and gave Thorsten the Academy toast. "Here's to space, and the Academy. To stars, to the men that walk them, and to the flaming ships that fly." I looked at Thorsten for the first time since I'd raised my glass, and it was my turn to laugh. He was gray, and somehow smaller in his thronelike chair. He stared across the table at me, and then let his eyes fall. Hesitantly, he spread the fingers of his hand, and looked at the pale circle where the ring had been. And, incredibly, he laughed. "Score one for the opposition," he chuckled. "Nice going, Ash." I laughed with him, keeping it on a casual plane. I'd done what I wanted to--hit him where he lived. Now, if I could give the conversation a nudge in just the right direction, I might be able to start him talking about his plans. I was that much closer to an outside chance to do something about them. "What happened, Harry?" I asked. "How'd you get from the TSN into being the top man in the Belt?" He bit. While Pat and I sat there, Pat nervously shifting her glance from him to me, and me not daring to look at her because of the things I'd say to myself, he told his story. The orderlies brought our dinner, putting dishes down and taking them away as he talked between mouthfuls.