"You hound!" cried Wheelwright, springing to his feet and half-drawing his Blandarc. "You threaten me?" "Your own words convict you, not I." Suddenly the pirate renegade thrust back his gun and flung back his grizzled head in a splutter of laughter. "What odds, Thorne? This ship goes into the sun and they with it." "But we're not going into the sun," said Thorne. "And who's to stop me?" demanded Wheelwright, laughing still. "Myself," said Thorne, abruptly coming to his feet with a tigerish surge, the barrel of his gun leaping from the holster on which his hand had been resting, the lethal volt-ball at its muzzle square between Wheelwright's startled eyes. Jaw agape, the General could only stare and stare, his hands lax at his side, and Thorne went softly on. "You spun your webs too fine, Lucas. I told you, as I told Bannerman, I was cured of the t'ang habit. He believed. You refused to believe. Now you pay for it." "You ... you weren't paralyzed at all?" stammered Wheelwright, sheer unbelief still apparent in his eyes. "My t'ang-soaked body did not absorb the catalystic salts Iris fed us," smiled Thorne, bleakly. "If I can no longer drink, neither can I be poisoned. Your cat's paw and his ray meant nothing to me." His voice tightened. "Enough, renegade! Your gunbelt! Unbuckle it. Drop it." Slowly the General unfastened the broad gold buckle of his rich belt, his head bowed. Then, as he released it, he suddenly thrust up his left arm to free his black cloak, jerked the belt forward smartly, and clipped Thorne across the wrist with the buckle. The belt, weighted down by the heavy gun, was torn from his grasp, but it had at least knocked the Blandarc from Thorne's hand as well. Snatching a knife from the lining of his cape, Wheelwright plunged forward with a snarl of triumph. He was all Chain Lucas now, all black-and-scarlet pirate. But as he leaped, his own treachery rose up to avenge his victims upon himself. Thorne flashed out his heavy Martian sword ... and Lucas stepped on Iris Chanler's dead and blood-soaked arm. He went staggering sideways, slipping in the half-dried blood she and Dallis had spilled so thickly across the carpeted deck, and as he struck in vain at Thorne the Captain leaned swiftly forward across Iris' body and drove his straight blade half-way to the hilt between the golden links of the pirate's golden chain. He did not die easily, Chain Lucas. Sprawled across the corpse of Dallis, he writhed and screamed, a hideous, bubbling scream of anger and fear. He clawed for the gun Thorne had dropped and Thorne pierced his arm to the bone. And when he managed to scrabble to his knees, still wielding the knife, the Captain stepped forward relentlessly. "This for Banya Tor," he whispered. And Chain Lucas, once the Inspector-General of the Planet Patrol, died as he had lived, a renegade and a traitor. * * * * *