g his right arm. Shanlee tried, briefly, to
resist.

"Seems to me you lost faith in Merlin awfully quick," the former town
marshal of Litchfield said. "You knew there was a Merlin all along,
and you never wanted us to find it."

Franz Veltrin, who had been "Leibert's" most enthusiastic adherent,
had also lost faith suddenly; he was shouting vituperation at the
Prophet of Merlin.

"Knock it off, Franz; he was only doing his duty," Conn said. "Weren't
you, General Shanlee?"

It took almost a minute before they stopped yelling for an explanation
and allowed him to make one. He caught Klem Zareff's comment: "Must be
pretty hot, if they have to send a general to handle it."

"I talked to Travis, yes. He gave me the same story he just repeated
on that interview," Conn said, picking his way carefully between fact
and fiction. "After I went back to Montevideo, he and this aide of his
must have been afraid I didn't believe it, which I didn't. When I was
ready to graduate, I got this offer of an instructorship; that was a
bribe to keep me on Terra and off Poictesme. When I turned it down and
took the _Mizar_ home, Travis sent Shanlee after me. He must have
grown that beard and that pageboy bob on the way out. I suppose he
contacted Murchison as soon as he landed. Wait a minute."

He went to the communication screen and punched out a combination. A
girl appeared and singsonged: "Barton-Massarra, Investigation and
Protection."

"Conn Maxwell here. We gave you some audiovisuals of a man with a
white beard, alias Carl Leibert," he began.

"Just a sec, Mr. Maxwell." She spoke quickly into a handphone. The
screen flickered, and she was replaced by a hard-faced young man in
dark clothes.

"Hello, Mr. Maxwell; Joe Massarra. We haven't anything on Leibert
yet."

"Are any of the officers of the _Andromeda_ where you can contact
them? Let them see those audiovisual. I'll bet that beard was grown
aboard ship coming out from Terra."

Bedlam broke out suddenly. Shanlee, who had been standing passively,
his right arm loosely grasped by Tom Brangwyn, came down on Brangwyn's
instep with the heel of his left foot and hit Brangwyn under the chin
with the heel of his left palm. Wrenching his arm free, he started for
the door. Sylvie Jacquemont snatched a chair and threw it along the
floor; it hit the fleeing man's ankles and brought him down. Half a
dozen men piled on top of him, and Brangwyn was yelling to them not to
choke him to d