When he killed me--God, how easy it was to overlook the most vital things! I hadn't even searched him. If he had a weapon on him I could certainly use it, for nothing can boost your morale quite so much when your life is at stake as the firm, cool feel of an atomic hand-gun against your palm. I was starting toward him when Nurse Cherubin said: "Stay here, and keep the door locked until I come back. I'll tap three times. I've got to get you some clothes." I nodded, feeling overwhelmingly grateful, tempted to take another minute--precious as every minute was--to tell how wonderful I thought her. She seemed to know without my saying a word, for her wide mouth smiled a little and she was gone. I stepped to the door and locked it, and then returned across the room and bent over Mr. Big. I found the weapon but I had to roll him over to get at it, because it was in a holster at his hip. His body was a dead weight, but when I got the weapon free he stirred a little and groaned. I clouted him on the jaw and he stopped groaning. Brutal? You bet it was, but I couldn't afford to take any chances on his coming to. What would you have done? If I'd killed him right then and there, the Board would not have censured me. I was sure of that. Not to have done so was perhaps foolish, a weakness in me. I was cutting down my chances of getting as far as the Colony, before a security alert went out, and the Wendel police started after me with instructions to blast me down on sight. But somehow I couldn't do it. Not only for the reasons I've mentioned ... because a new head on the Wendel boa constrictor would have solved nothing ... but because it went against the grain. I'd have had a feeling of guilt I never could have completely thrown off. He'd intended to kill me, all right ... no doubt of that. But I couldn't return the compliment in the same coin. It made no sense, perhaps, but that's the way it was. The weapon pleased me. It was an atomic hand-gun that had cost a small fortune to construct--intricate, extremely compact, the latest model, the finest, the best. Fortunately I knew a great deal about such weapons, because unusual-type firearms have always fascinated me. This one I was sure I could aim and fire with accuracy, even though some of the precision gadgetry was new to me. Twenty-five thousand dollars at least that gun had set Henry Wendel back, but what was twenty-five thousand to a man with a fortune of eight or ten billion? It seemed tragic and a pity that all of that money should have been spent on a weapon that would pass out of his hands into the possession of a man unfriendly to him. But it didn't sadden me too much and I felt even less sad when I'd unbuckled the holster also, strapped it to my own hip and thrust the hand-gun back into it.