"Of course, Madame," the heavy-faced one said rapidly. "The disguises--a desperate necessity, I assure you. There is very little time, however. Once informed of your escape from the hospital, and of the Senior Quadrate's violation of arrest, it was necessary to act at once to find you. Genuine S-squads cannot be much behind us. We're but one of a number of our groups in the search, and we came to your home only so no possibility might be overlooked. Yet I don't understand--" For a moment a look of puzzled doubt flickered on the underground leader's heavy features. His nervous gaze touched the strange array of forbidden equipment which but moments before had been bathed in the green-blue glow. "There will be time for explanations later!" Lisa said. She caught herself as she was about to add that what the agent was saying made little sense. She put a protective arm around each of her still, frightened children. There must be great trouble or the group would not have so brazenly exposed itself, and come here to her home. Something desperate enough so that added confusion might serve only to make a dangerous situation an impossible one. "But I don't--you said violation of arrest," her husband was saying stubbornly. "I demand a thorough--" "Your lives are in danger, sir. If we do not move immediately, it will very probably be not at all. Gundar Tayne is relentless, and is reported enroute from Venus to join this search himself." "Tayne!" Blair's face blanched, then reddened. "The Taynes, you mean! Gundar and Larsen, with Larsen behind it--" "Sir? You're being tracked down for--they say, for murdering Larsen. Please follow us sir, Madame...." The look of puzzled bewilderment deepened on the underground leader's face as he motioned his men in screening flanks surrounding the four. One of the men handed him a white bundle from a compact equipment-pack on his back. "You had better get these on. We would say we have captured your boys--" * * * * * They were S-Council uniforms, and the Quadrate and his wife donned them quickly; Blair doing so more in hesitant imitation of Lisa's frantic haste than from the desperation of a situation which he only half-understood. _Murdered_ Larsen Tayne? Then ... yes of course. The other Blair. But why should the other Blair hate Tayne so? He was of a different Earth, of course.... He would think like those of his own world. He would hate all this world stood for. Hate Tayne for his overbearing, brutish use of authority--criminal cleverness at deception. Suddenly, he knew the confusion of panic for the first time in his life. Suddenly, his mind was a boiling thing, and all the brilliant solutions that had been forming in it with split-second rapidity were inexplainably invalid, wrong.... And then they were at a half-run, leaving the house, heading for a 'copter painted with the S-Council insigne, counterfeit serial code-numbers beneath it.