a
traitor; he is one of the world's greatest mathematical minds. Have we a
right to destroy that mind?"

Von Heldenfeld shouted, banging his fist on the table: "I don't care if
he's Gauss and Riemann and Lorenz and Poincare and Minkowski and
Whitehead and Einstein, all collapsed into one! The man is a stinking
traitor, not only to us, but to all scientists and all sciences! If he
doesn't shoot himself, hand him over to the United States, and let them
shoot him! Why do we go on arguing?"

* * * * *

Lowiewski was smiling, now. The panic that had seized him in the hallway
below, and the desperation when the cigarette pack had been opened, had
left him.

"Now I have a modest proposal, which will solve your difficulties," he
said. "I have money, papers, clothing, everything I will need, outside
the reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there is
any trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings,
without the unnecessary embellishment of my suicide--"

Rudolf von Heldenfeld let out an inarticulate roar of fury. For an
instant he was beyond words. Then he sprang to his feet.

"Look at him!" he cried. "Look at him, laughing in our faces, for the
dupes and fools he thinks we are!" He thrust out his hand toward
MacLeod. "Give me the pistol! He won't shoot himself; I'll do it for
him!"

"It would work, Dunc. Really, it would," Heym ben-Hillel urged.

"No," Karen Hilquist contradicted. "If he left here, everybody would
know what had happened, and we'd be accused of protecting him. If he
kills himself, we can get things hushed up: dead traitors are good
traitors. But if he remains alive, we must disassociate ourselves from
him by handing him over."

"And wreck the prestige of the Team?" Lowiewski asked.

"At least you will not live to see that!" Suzanne retorted.

Heym ben-Hillel put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.
"Is there no solution to this?" he almost wailed.

"Certainly: an obvious solution," MacLeod said, rising. "Rudolf has just
stated it. Only I'm leader of this Team, and there are, of course, jobs
a team-leader simply doesn't delegate." The safety catch of the Beretta
clicked a period to his words.

"No!" The word was wrenched almost physically out of Lowiewski. He, too,
was on his feet, a sudden desperate fear in his face. "No! You wouldn't
murder me!"

"The term is 'execute'," MacLeod corrected. Then his arm swung