“Hirzif shouldn’t have talked about refusing that retainer,” Klarnood frowned. “That isn’t good Assassin ethics. Why, yes, Lord Virzal; that was cleverly planned. It ought to get results. But I wish you’d get the Lady Dallona out of Darsh, and preferably off Terra, as soon as you can. We’ve benefited by this, so far, but I shouldn’t like to see things go much further. A real civil war could develop out of this situation, and I don’t want that. Call on me for help; I’ll give you a code word to use at Assassins’ Hall.” * * * * * A real civil war was developing even as Klarnood spoke; by mid-morning of the next day, the fighting that had been partially suppressed by the Constabulary had broken out anew. The Assassins employed by the Solar Hotel—heavily re-enforced during the night—had fought a pitched battle with Statisticalist partisans on the landing stage above Verkan Vall’s suite, and now several Constabulary airboats were patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo. Just how successful in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other parts of the towering city unit. There hadn’t been a civil war on the Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year. If anything, he was surprised that the explosion had taken so long to occur. One of the servants furnished to him by the hotel management approached him in the drawing room, holding a four-inch-square wafer of white plastic. “Lord Virzal, there is a masked Assassin in the hallway who brought this under Assassins’ Truce,” he said. Verkan Vall took the wafer and pared off three of the four edges, which showed black where they had been fused. Unfolding it, he found, as he had expected, that the pyrographed message within was in the alphabet and language of the First Paratime Level: Vall, darling: Am I glad you got here; this time I really _am_ in the middle, but good! The Assassin, Dirzed, who brings this, is in my service. You can trust him implicitly; he’s about the only person in Darsh you can trust. He’ll bring you to where I am. Dalla P.S. I hope you’re not still angry about that musician. I told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with an experiment in telepathy. D.