gious strictness,
and it had kept him as sane as he was ever likely to be again, for over
six years.

It might, he sometimes thought, keep him sane until a third ship
presently came along to this place. And then ...

The third ship was coming along at the moment, still some five hours'
flight out from the system. She was a small ship with lean, rakish
lines, a hot little speedster, gliding placidly through subspace just
now, her engines throttled down.

Aboard her, things were less peaceful.

* * * * *

The girl was putting up a pretty good fight but getting nowhere with it
against the bull-necked Fleetman who had her pinned back against the
wall.

Wellan Dasinger paused in momentary indecision at the entrance to the
half-darkened control section of the speedboat. The scuffle in there
very probably was none of his business. The people of the roving
Independent Fleets had their own practices and mores and resented
interference from uninformed planet dwellers. For all Dasinger knew,
their blue-eyed lady pilot enjoyed roughhousing with the burly members
of her crew. If the thing wasn't serious....

He heard the man rap out something in the Willata Fleet tongue,
following the words up with a solid thump of his fist into the girl's
side. The thump hadn't been playful, and her sharp gasp of pain
indicated no enjoyment whatever. Dasinger stepped quickly into the
room.

He saw the girl turn startled eyes toward him as he came up behind the
man. The man was Liu Taunus, the bigger of the two crew members ... too
big and too well muscled by a good deal, in fact, to make a
sportsmanlike suggestion to divert his thumpings to Dasinger look like a
sensible approach. Besides Dasinger didn't know the Willata Fleet's
language. The edge of his hand slashed twice from behind along the thick
neck; then his fist brought the breath whistling from Taunus's lungs
before the Fleetman had time to turn fully towards him.

It gave Dasinger a considerable starting advantage. During the next
twenty seconds or so the advantage seemed to diminish rapidly. Taunus's
fists and boots had scored only near misses so far, but he began to look
like the hardest big man to chop down Dasinger had yet run into. And
then the Fleetman was suddenly sprawling on the floor, face down, arms
flung out limply, a tough boy with a thoroughly bludgeoned nervous
system.

Dasinger was straightening up when he heard the _thunk_ of th