A startlingly beautiful girl, he saw, was standing in the doorway to the corridor covering him with a wicked dart gun. She was a tall girl with the yellowest hair he'd ever seen. She wore a spun glass negligee and her skin was blue. It was the pastel blue of a Terran dawn flushed with rose. She came all the way inside, slid shut the door. "Who are you? What do you want?" "Why don't you turn in the alarm?" said the hooded man dryly. The poisoned needle gun was sending goose flesh quivering up his spine. A scratch would be fatal. His jaw tightened beneath the hood. His eyes were hard green discs, the dangerous eyes of a hunted man. "Oh no." The blue girl's voice was low. "I wouldn't do that. I'd never be able to get the safe open by myself." "What?" "I want you to open the safe for me." * * * * * The hooded man didn't reply for a moment. At length, he asked: "What then?" The girl giggled. "I take what I want, and you take what you want," she explained naively. "See. And you'll be blamed for taking it all. Only you're going to be disappointed!" "Disappointed? How?" He took a step toward her. "Bemmelman never keeps his money on the plantation. It's all at Venusport. There aren't fifty monad in the safe." "Maybe I'm not after money." He took a second step, his green eyes opaque. She looked at him intently, made a thin gasping noise. "You're the Renegade!" The dart gun trembled in her small blue fist. "Oh my God! I didn't guess. You're the Renegade!" Without affirming or denying the statement, he asked, "What do you want from the safe?" and took a third step. "Don't come any closer! I'm a very good shot. See!" The little gun went spat. The hooded man heard the dart whisper past his ear, thunk into the paneling behind him. His stomach felt suddenly hollow. "My dear girl," he said dryly; "if you do that again, I won't be able to open a book, let alone that safe. I'm a mass of jelly now." "Then you will open it for me?" "What is it you want?" "Evidence!" Impulsively she took a step toward him, allowed the dart gun to waver out of line. "Evidence to send Bemmelman to the disintegration chamber!" The hooded man felt appalled at the sheer animal hate in her violet eyes. Her skin was too light for her to be a full blooded Jovian primitive. She must be a cross. He mentally snapped his fingers. That was it, of course. The Blue Venus! The slave for whom Hal Bemmelman was asking five thousand monad on the Venusian Slave Mart. He said: "You aren't overly fond of Bemmelman?" "I loathe him!" With a savage jerk, she yanked her white negligee down from her left shoulder. "See that?" He saw a scar on the pale-blue skin above her breast. It was the shape of a fern leaf and he could have covered it with his thumb. "Branded!" she spat. "My father was a Jovian Dawn Man--an animal! But my mother was an Earth woman. Hal Bemmelman kidnapped her!"