But she clutched his belt, clinging. Snatching his razor-edged knife from its sheath, she slashed at him. He rocked backward, off balance. The girl twisted. He glimpsed her face--teeth bared, features strain-straut. Back-handed, she lashed at his temple with the knife-haft, her full strength behind it. It struck home as the first guards burst through the doorway.... CHAPTER II Twin blue-and-silver Federation banners marked the place of the high commissioner of all the asteroids. His table stood at the far end of the vast room that had been _Ktar_ Wassreck's workshop. Other tables radiated out in a great arc from it--tables crowded with officers of the Federation fleet. Heavy-thewed Uranian _daus_ sat side by side with slim reptilian _Pervods_. Transmi of Venus, all ear-stalks and sucking tubes, faced rubbery, flat-featured Europans. Creatures of half-a-hundred divergent races, hybrids and mutants, they gathered here from all the far-flung planets of the Federation. Their rising voices clashed in strange cacophony through the tinkle of cutlery and crystal, thrown back in a din of ringing echoes from the giant metal robots that still lined the walls. Straightening in spite of the weight of his shackles, shrugging off the hands of the guards who flanked him, Jarl Corvett met the seething hostility of their glances with stiff-necked defiance. But underneath, questions nagged him: _Why am I here? Who ordered me brought to this banquet?_ But here he stood. That was what counted. Boldly, he surveyed the room ... stared unflinching across at the commissioner. A handsome man, Commissioner _rey_ Gundre. Heavy-bodied and aging, in these later days. But still personable, still a figure to catch the eye, even slack-faced and slouched in his seat as now. He was a man of Earth, plainly, with all the strengths and weaknesses and surging conflicts that went with that heritage. The sunburst insignia of his rank stood out against the deep blue of his impeccably tailored uniform. The white blaze that accented the darkness of his hair only made him the more striking. His aide sat at his left hand, Ylana at his right. Ylana the golden, daughter of the high commissioner himself. And Jarl Corvett's nemesis. Even looking at her here, Jarl could feel the muscles at the hinges of his jaws draw tight. Tonight she sat slim and graceful at the banquet table in a scarlet stylon gown. Her blonde hair swept up in a soft golden nimbus like that of Tal Neeni, sea goddess of Callisto. The red lips were smiling, the grey eyes asparkle. Yet even when she laughed, some dark inner mood seemed to shadow her beauty, even as it had last night while she lay asleep. That shadow.... Was it alien blood, or a secret? Again Jarl caught himself wondering. He thought: _I should hate her!_ And in the same moment: _Even Sais is no lovelier_.... Cursing himself for a fool and a weakling, he tore his eyes from her and studied the aide.