They gave their names, and Trehearne added, "We're unarmed. We're through." There was a certain relief in being through. Whatever happened from here on was out of their hands. They could sit passively and rest, and let it happen. He looked at the ship and thought of warmth and light and food and comfort, and most of all he thought of sleep. Shairn and Kerrel could come later. The men from the cruiser carried weapons, a type of shock-rifle more deadly than the little tubes that only stunned. They came out a short distance, toward the three bulky shapes that shuffled down the beam of light. The first voice that had spoken gave an order, and the two men went off toward the skiff to search it, their belt lamps bobbing. Then it spoke again to Trehearne and the others. "Keep your hands as high as you can. All right, that's far enough." Trehearne said, "I told you, we're unarmed." "Precaution. Stand where you are." They stood, and were searched. "Very well," said the officer's voice. "Come aboard." "No." One short word, spoken quietly in a voice that Trehearne knew. A voice he had not heard for a long, long time, but that he remembered. Kerrel's voice. Some of the exhaustion in him stirred and drew back, and anger took his place. The men stood in the beam of light, but with their backs toward it, facing their prisoners. The undiffused glare passed around them, leaving their faces in darkness, invisible behind the helmet plates. Trehearne tried to identify Kerrel, but he could not. The officer said, rather irritably, "But there's no point in standing out here any longer." The case had been long and hard for him, too. "We take off as soon as the search detail comes back." "Yes," said Kerrel. "But not them. They stay here." The suited shapes, the faceless and unhuman shapes that had stood together drew apart a little and turned toward each other, as though they tried to pierce the darkness with their peering helmet plates. There was a silence of astonishment, and then Edri said, "That's murder." The voice of the officer, rising on a note of anger, demanded, "Kerrel, what the hell--Have you gone clean crazy?" "Is justice a crazy thing?" There was something strange about Kerrel's voice. It was flat and toneless and devoid of passion, the voice of a man with too much inside himself to bear, too much to find escape through any normal channels. "They may have succeeded. Do you understand that? They may, just possibly, have done what they set out to do. Do you know what that would mean?" "As well as you do. And don't worry about justice, they'll get it. But they'll get it from the Council on Llyrdis, according to law." "Law," said Kerrel softly. "Once Trehearne received the benefit of our law. I told them then that they were wrong to give it to him. The law is good, I've served it all my life. But there are times when one has to go beyond the law if one is to go on serving it. Leave them here."