"Hold on!" protested Samms. "You certainly can't do _that_! Inertia is--_must_ be--a basic attribute of matter, and surely cannot be done away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything like that. Fred--I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too." "Don't worry about us, Chief." Rodebush replied with a smile. "If you will tell me what matter is, fundamentally, I may agree with you ... No? Well, then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to do a lot of things that nobody ever thought of doing before." Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be interrupted by the voice of the secretary. "Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Samms, but some things have come up that you will have to handle. Knobos is calling from out near Mars. He has caught the _Endymion_, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, but he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But Knobos is on now--what do you want him to do about the _Endymion_?" "Tell him to--no, put him on here, I'd better tell him myself," Samms directed, and his face hardened in ruthless decision as the horny, misshapen face of the Martian lieutenant appeared upon the screen. "What do you think, Knobos? Shall they come to trial or not?" "No." "I don't think so, either. It is better that a few gangsters should disappear in space than run the risk of another uprising. See to it." "Right." The screen darkened and Samms spoke to his secretary. "Put Milton and Fletcher on whenever their rays come in." He then turned to his guests. "We've covered the ground quite thoroughly. Good-bye--I wish I could go with you, but I'll be pretty well tied up for the next week or two." "Tied up, doesn't half express it," Rodebush remarked as the two scientists walked along a corridor toward an elevator. "He probably is the busiest man on the three planets." "As well as the most powerful," Cleveland supplemented. "And very few men could use his power as fairly--but he's welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned. I'd have the pink fantods for a month if I had to do only once what he's just done--and to him it's just part of a day's work." "You mean the _Endymion_? What else could he do?" "Nothing--that's just what I'm talking about. It had to be done, since bringing them to trial would probably mean killing half the people of Morseca; but at the same time it's a ghastly thing to have to order a job of deliberate, cold-blooded, and illegal murder."