Hoffman's laugh boomed out. "You bet it has. And it's going to stay that way. The last one took it on the lam. The one before that got killed. The one before that sort of disappeared...." Meek spoke slowly, weak eyes burning. "Horrible condition," he said. "Something's got to be done about it." * * * * * The streets were deserted, quiet, a deadly quiet that lurked and hovered, waiting for something to happen. Oliver Meek polished his marshal's star with his coat sleeve, glanced up at the dome. Stars glittered, their light distorted by the heavy quartz. Stars in a dead black sky. Bathed in the weak starlight, the mighty walls of the canyon reared above the dome. A canyon, the only sort of place where a city could rise on one of the planetoids. For the walls protected the dome against the deadly barrage of whizzing debris that continually shrieked down from space. Those mighty cragged mountains and dizzy cliffs were pocked with the blows dealt, through long eons, by that hail of armor-piercing projectiles. Meek returned his gaze to the street, saw the lights of the Silver Moon. Nervously he felt of the papers in his inside pocket. Warrants for the arrest of John Hoffman for murder, Luke Blaine for murder, Jim Smithers for reckless shooting, Jake Loomis for assault and battery, Robert Blake for robbery. And suddenly, Oliver Meek was afraid. For death waited him, he knew, inside the swinging doors of the Silver Moon. A death preluded by this quiet street. Almost as if he were awaking from a dream, he found questions filling his brain. What was he doing here? Why had he gotten himself into a jam like this? What difference did it make to him what happened to Asteroid City? It had been anger that had made him do it ... that unaccountable anger which had flared when Hoffman told him to get out. After all, what difference would a few days make? He was going to leave anyhow. He'd seen about all there was to see in Asteroid City. He wanted to see the Prowler and the stones with the strange inscriptions on them, but they were sights he could get along without. If he turned around and walked the other way he could reach his space ship in just a few minutes. There was fuel enough to take him to Ganymede. No one would know until he was already gone. And after he was gone, what would he care what anybody thought? He stood irresolutely, arguing with himself. Then he shook his head, resumed his march toward the Silver Moon. A figure stepped from a dark doorway. Meek saw the threatening gleam of steel. His hands streaked toward his gun-butts, but something prodded him in the back and he froze, fingers touching metal. "All right, marshal," said a mocking voice. "You just turn around and walk the other way." He felt his guns lifted from their holsters and he turned around and walked. Footsteps crunched beside him and behind him, but otherwise he walked in silence.