Astrell, a beauty no longer. The features of her face sagged loose and shapeless. Her body seemed to dissolve into the floor. And everywhere, the ooze, the ooze.... A final, sighing breath. Life left her. Choking, Ross stumbled to a corner and tried to scrub the slime from his hands with a ragged jacket that hung there. Behind him, still poised in the doorway with Veta, Cheng said grimly, "Don't try anything, Thigpen. You're worth money to me. I don't want to kill you." "That's right, Ross. Oh, absolutely right!" It was a voice out of nowhere, coolly mocking, familiar yet distorted. Ross, Cheng, Veta--they all turned, startled. The voice again: "As a matter of fact, Ross, you're even more valuable to me than to Cheng. That's why I'm taking over." Ross looked up sharply--really up, into the echoing, empty, catwalk-spanned reaches of the warehouse that stretched above the ceilingless partitions of the office rooms. Adjudicator Pike Mawson's grav-seat hovered there, high above them. Smiling, sociable, he nodded to Ross. But there was nothing pleasant or sociable about the paragun in his hand. It stayed steady and unwavering. "As I said, my dear Ross," Mawson murmured, gesturing with the weapon, "I'm taking over." He pressed a button in the flying chair's control-arm as he spoke. The seat plummeted down into the room. CHAPTER VII THIEVES' HONOR It was one of those moments when everything happens at once. For as the grav-seat dropped, Cheng whipped up his gun, firing at Mawson. Veta Hall screamed. Ross lunged across the room towards girl and slaver. Somewhere outside, a blaster sang its twanging, metallic song of death. Ross crashed into Veta and her captor. Driving his shoulder between them, he jerked the girl from Cheng's grip, even while he smashed a blow to the outlaw's midriff. Cheng stared straight ahead--eyes bulged out, jaw hanging. His hands stayed at his sides. Ross drew back a quick step, uncertainty written on his face. Cheng swayed for a moment, first forward and then back. The next instant a violent shudder, plainly visible, ran through him. His paragun clattered to the floor. Another second and the smuggler himself half-turned and spilled forward on his face. There was a hole in the small of his back where his spine had been--a hole well-nigh the size of a man's head, the sort of hole torn by a blaster-bolt. Veta covered her face. Ross clenched his teeth. Simultaneously, two men stepped into the doorway. One carried a short-barreled blaster, the other a paragun. Both wore grins of sadistic satisfaction. Now, off to one side, Pike Mawson spoke again: "Good work, gentlemen, though a trifle close. If that beam Cheng triggered had sliced three inches lower, you'd have had to find a new employer." Mawson moved a dial on his chair's control-plate. The grav-seat swept round in a smooth spiral and set down on the floor in front of Ross.