f making extensive repairs on Pluto.
_Mozart's Lady_ was there to stay.

The safe thing to do would be to inform Neptune and wait in space until
the police cruisers came for House Bartock. The alternative was to
planetfall near _Mozart's Lady_, take the convict into custody, and then
notify Neptune.

If Bartock were alone the choice would have been an easy one. But
Bartock was not alone. He had a hundred girls with him. He was
desperate. He might try anything.

Mayhem had to go down after him.

* * * * *

The trouble was, though, that of all the worlds in the galaxy--not
merely in Sol System--Pluto was the one most dangerous to Johnny Mayhem.
He had been pursuing House Bartock for three days. Which meant he had
two days left before it was imperative that he leave his current body.
This would mean notifying the hub of the Galaxy by sub-space radio to
pull out his _elan_, but Pluto's heavyside layer was the strongest in
the solar system, so strong that sub-space radio couldn't penetrate it.

And that was not the only thing wrong with Pluto. It was, in fact, an
incredible anomaly of a world. Almost four billion miles from the sun at
its widest swing, it still was not too cold to support life. Apparently
radioactive heat in its core kept it warm. It even had an Earth-type
atmosphere, although the oxygen-content was somewhat too rich and apt to
make you giddy. And it was a slow world.

Time moved slowly on Pluto. Too slowly. When you first landed, according
to the few explorers who had attempted it, the native fauna seemed like
statues. Their movement was too slow for the eye to register. That was
lucky, for the fauna tended to be enormous and deadly. But after a
while--how long a while Mayhem didn't know--the fauna, subjectively,
seemed to speed up. The animals commenced moving slowly, then a bit
faster, then normally. That, Mayhem knew, was entirely subjective. The
animals of Pluto were not changing their rate of living: the visitor to
Pluto was slowing down to match their laggard pace.

* * * * *

Two days, thought Mayhem. That was all he had. And, hours after he
landed, he'd start to slow down. There was absolutely no way of telling
how much time elapsed once that happened, for the only clocks that did
not go haywire on Pluto were spring-wind clocks, and there hadn't been a
spring-wind clock in the solar system for a hundred and fifty years.

Resul