Joris said nothing. Trehearne saw his sunken eyes looking across the spaceport and thought how it must be for him to come back thus to this place where for years he had sat with his hands guiding the Vardda ships that came and went. Then the car took them out of the spaceport, fast. Trehearne saw that other cars, with guards alone in them, ran unobtrusively along ahead of and behind them. And nothing was changed in Llyrdis. The peacock city preened itself beneath the sun, iridescent, splendid, its streets thronged with the smiling Vardda and the other stranger races--echoing with music, brilliant with color. They passed a Vardda man and girl who stood, laughing as they talked. And it was then that Trehearne ceased altogether to hope. "We're going to the Council Hall," Edri said presently. Joris nodded somberly. "I could have told you that. As a Council member, I have to be formally impeached and removed before charges against me can be pressed." He added grimly, "Old Ristin, the chairman, won't weep over that. We tangled pretty often, in the past." The Council Hall sat amid a crowded nexus of governmental buildings. It dominated Llyrdis, not by size, but by age. It was a grey old pile, without beauty but with the massiveness and solidity of eternal things. Its courts and corridors and staring officials Trehearne saw only vaguely. They slid over his vision, and nothing seemed entirely tangible until, in an anteroom, Shairn's face leaped real to his eyes. She had been waiting to see him pass, he knew. Her face was white and strained, and she said nothing, but her eyes said, "_Michael! Michael!_" He looked back at her as they went on and he wondered what she read in his own eyes. And then they had entered the deliberative chamber itself. It was not large and not crowded, a half-moon-shaped hall with something more than a hundred Vardda in its chairs. Of the blur of faces turned toward him, most were grave, some curious, some open in their hatred. Ristin, the chairman, was a magnificent white-haired old Lucifer who disdained the petty vanity of pretending that this was a routine matter. "This Council is not a judicial body," he informed the four. "The criminal charges against you--piracy, resisting of authority--will be handled by the regular courts. We are here investigating a matter urgent to the state." Joris got up, thrusting his gray head forward like an old mastiff's. He growled, "Since this is an investigation, you can't legally carry it out without hearing us." Ristin said grimly, "The Coordinator of the Port was always good at making himself heard here. But you will have to wait this time, Joris." He looked up at the watching Vardda faces as he added, "The problem of your personal offense is not foremost. What concerns us most urgently is the general policy to be adopted by the Council."