Burnett didn't say anything, but he climbed the rest of the way, stood quietly in the grey-metal air-lock. The enemy official was as delicately made as a fine white spider. Eyelids, closed, were faintly blue. The hair was thin silken strands of pale gold, waved and pressed close to a veined skull. Where the thin-lipped mouth fell open a cluster of needle-tipped teeth glittered. The fragile body was enclosed completely in milk-pale syntha-silk, a holstered gun at the middle. Burnett rubbed his jaw. "Well?" Rice exploded. His eyes were hot in his young, sharp-cut face, hot and black. "Good Lord, Sam, do you know who this is?" Burnett scowled uneasily and said no. "It's Lethla!" Rice retorted. Burnett said, "Lethla?" And then: "Oh, yes! Kriere's majordomo. That right?" "Don't say it calm, Sam. Say it big. Say it big! If Lethla is here in space, then Kriere's not far away from him!" Burnett shrugged. More bodies, more people, more war. What the hell. What the hell. He was tired. Talk about bodies and rulers to someone else. Rice grabbed him by the shoulders. "Snap out of it, Sam. Think! Kriere--The All-Mighty--in our territory. His right hand man dead. That means Kriere was in an accident, too!" Sam opened his thin lips and the words fell out all by themselves. "Look, Rice, you're new at this game. I've been at it ever since the Venus-Earth mess started. It's been see-sawing back and forth since the day you played hookey in the tenth grade, and I've been in the thick of it. When there's nothing left but seared memories, I'll be prowling through the void picking up warriors and taking them back to the good green Earth. Grisly, yes, but it's routine. "As for Kriere--if he's anywhere around, he's smart. Every precaution is taken to protect that one." "But Lethla! His body must mean something!" "And if it does? Have we got guns aboard this morgue-ship? Are we a battle-cuiser to go against him?" "We'll radio for help?" "Yeah? If there's a warship within our radio range, seven hundred thousand miles, we'll get it. Unfortunately, the tide of battle has swept out past Earth in a new war concerning Io. That's out, Rice." Rice stood about three inches below Sam Burnett's six-foot-one. Jaw hard and determined, he stared at Sam, a funny light in his eyes. His fingers twitched all by themselves at his sides. His mouth twisted, "You're one hell of a patriot, Sam Burnett!" Burnett reached out with one long finger, tapped it quietly on Rice's barrel-chest. "Haul a cargo of corpses for three thousand nights and days and see how patriotic you feel. All those fine muscled lads bloated and crushed by space pressures and heat-blasts. Fine lads who start out smiling and get the smile burned off down to the bone--"