There were only four technicians in the armory and they were frozen into an astonished tableau at the sight of a huge, bullet-headed, fat man crouching before them with a machine-gun in his arms. Pell crouched behind him, letting his glance flicker about the room. On the floor were the cadmium and graphite vaults which had been ripped bodily from the ship. Over half of them had been opened and strewn about the tables were an array of hand-blasters undergoing the delicate process of being charged with pellets of U-235. Pell broke the short silence. "Don't move, any of you! Heintz, pick up a blaster that's charged!" Heintz shuffled forward cautiously to relieve a swarthy technician of a blaster which had frozen in his hands when they had burst into the room. "Okay, Bede, gimme that!" Heintz growled, poking his machine-gun toward the technician. His action seemed to touch off the fuse of a bomb. Suddenly the technician leaped away from Heintz and leveled the blaster in his hands. The other technicians leaped in unison for the tables, snatching up blasters. Heintz fired at Bede, then whirled and loosed a long, sustained burst at the other three. But he reckoned without Bede who had fallen to the floor wounded, but not dead. With a look of venemous hate he swung the blaster in his hands toward Heintz and pressed the stud. Pell fired at him, once, twice, then again, but even as the heavy automatic crashed in his hand, Bede fired at Heintz. Heintz exploded. With cataclysmic violence his body had vaporized in a blue-white sheen of impossibly hot atomic radiance. Pell became violently sick. Recovering, he looked dazedly at the slaughter about him and realized that he alone was left to deal with the situation. For the first time he understood how great an ally the fat man had been. Blind, unreasoning hate for the forces of the DIC surged into his mind. He saw Gutridge's mocking face and it added fuel to the rage burning fiercely within him. He recalled vividly that Gret was in his possession and the fires of bitter hate blasted away all remnants of his former caution. Outside he could hear the mutter of DIC soldiers who were obviously confused by the shooting of the guards and the sound of further shooting inside. Then the steel-reinforced door began to quiver on its hinges. Pell slowly looked down at the ancient pistol in his hand and laughed to himself. There was no further need for that thing, he reflected. He threw it way from him and walked purposefully over to the body of Bede, the dead technician. Without the slightest hesitation, he rolled the bloody thing over and took the blaster from its lifeless hands. He looked back at the door. The pounding had stopped, but he saw a little white flame dancing and flickering around the lock. Pell smiled a bit, leveled the blaster in his arms, and depressed the stud. [Illustration: _Pell smiled, leveled the blaster and depressed the stud._]