"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure. Never thought of that," Baldy said wearily. He seemed dazed now. "Let's see if you can stand." Quillan helped the big man to his feet. Baldy hadn't bled too much outwardly, but he seemed to have estimated his own condition correctly. He wasn't for long. Quillan slid an arm under his shoulders. "Where's a ComWeb?" he asked. Baldy blinked about. "Passage there--" His voice was beginning to thicken. The ComWeb was in the second room up the passage. Quillan eased Perk into the seat before it. Baldy's head lolled heavily forward, like a drunken man's. "What's the number?" Quillan asked. Baldy reflected a few seconds, blinking owlishly at the instrument, then told him. Quillan tapped out the number, flicked on the vision screen, then stood aside and back, beyond the screen's range. "Yeah, Perk?" a voice said some seconds later. "Hey, _Perk_ ... Perk, what's with ya?" Baldy spat blood, grinned. "Shot--" he said. "_What?_" "Yeah." Baldy scowled, blinking. "Now, lessee--Oh, yeah. Star gang's gonna jump ya! Watch it!" "What?" "Yeah, watch--" Baldy coughed, laid his big head slowly down face forward on the ComWeb stand, and stopping moving. "Perk! Man, wake up! Perk!" Quillan quietly took out the gun, reached behind the stand and blew the ComWeb apart. He wasn't certain what the freighter's crew would make of the sudden break in the connection, but they could hardly regard it as reassuring. He made a brief prowl then through the main sections of the level. Evidence everywhere of a short and furious struggle, a struggle between men panicked and enraged almost beyond any regard for self-preservation. It must have been over in minutes. He found that the big hall portal to the ground level had been sealed, whether before or after the shooting he couldn't know. There would have been around twenty members of the Brotherhood on the level. None of them had lived as long as Baldy Perk, but they seemed to have accounted for approximately an equal number of the Star's security force first. * * * * * Five Star men came piling out of the fifth level portal behind him a minute or two later, Ryter in the lead. Orca behind Ryter. All five held leveled guns. "You won't need the hardware," Quillan assured them. "It's harmless enough now. Come on in." They followed him silently up to the cubicle, stared comprehendingly at dials and indicators. "The thing's back inside there, all right!" Ryter said. He looked at Quillan. "Is this where you've been all the time?" "Sure, Where else?" The others were forming a half-circle about him, a few paces back. "Taking quite a chance with that Hlat, weren't you?" Ryter remarked.