"You make up a batch of the catalyst. You put it out to the old men, the men of power." "I'll be free of Venus Barracks in a week. After that--who knows? What limit can there be, when we've eternal life ourselves, plus the privilege of peddling it to others in hundred-year doses?" The adjudicator was shaking by the time he finished. Twin spots of color marked his cheek bones. His hands moved ceaselessly, without respite. The silence echoed. Mawson's hands stopped moving. He straightened in his seat. "Mr. Ross," he said softly, "I'm afraid I judged you too well. You're indeed a man of honor--so much so that even a lie to save your life sticks in your craw. So I'll put our business on a different level." A pause, heavy with tension. "Mr. Ross, count on it: if you don't carry through to the letter the plan I've outlined, both you and Veta Hall will die, by the most unpleasant mode a fine creative imagination can devise." Ross seemed to stand a trifle straighter. "I thought that was coming," he nodded slowly. And then: "Fair enough. I'll do all I can to locate Thigpen's things." "I thought you'd see it my way," Adjudicator Mawson murmured smoothly. He gestured to the two men who still stood in the doorway. "Now that I'm a prisoner, gentlemen, you'd best get out of here. Take the girl with you. You know where to keep her." The man with the paragun stepped back. But the other, the one called Corrack, didn't move. Sharply, Mawson said, "Corrack! You heard me!" "Sure, I heard you," the blaster-man agreed. He grinned, the same sadistic grin that had marked him when he first stepped into the doorway. "Only maybe there's something you don't know." "Something I don't know--?" Mawson frowned. "Speak up, Corrack! What is it?" The other's grin broadened. "It's this starbo," he explained, gesturing to Ross. "It's his clothes." "His clothes--?" Mawson stared. "Well, what about them?" "Nothing," smirked Corrack. "Nothing at all--_except they're the outfit Thigpen was wearing when I had that drink with him last week_!" Mawson's head snapped round as if on veloid bearings. "Rack you, Ross--!" But his tone belied his words, for there was wild jubilation in it. Pounding the air of his flying chair, he cried, "Search him, Corrack! Search him! See if he's got a writer!" Wordless, the blaster-man obeyed ... delivered the instrument to Mawson. * * * * * Fingers shaking, the adjudicator manipulated the upper end of the carved shaft. The cap lifted off. A glistening ampule dropped into his hand. Mawson threw back his head and laughed--peal after peal, hysterical with sheer delight. Then, sobering, he snatched the aeroderm injector from the table where Astrell had dropped it. Fitting in the ampule, he held the jet against his arm-vein.