oved toward the seal. His foot found the button, snapping
the entrance open. He pitched the giant out overhanded; holding the
entrance, he reached for the dark man with one hand and tossed him on
top of the giant.

"To me, it's nothing," he called out. "Take these two back to young
Jurgens, boys, and tell him to keep his punks out of my house."

The entrance snapped shut then, and Corey turned back to Gordon, wiping
the wisps of hair from his face. He was still wheezing asthmatically,
but there seemed to be no change in the rhythm of his breathing. "As I
was going to say, cobber," he said, "we've got a little social game
going upstairs--the room with the window. Fine view of the parades. We
need a fourth."

Gordon started to protest that he was tired and needed his sleep; then
he shrugged. Corey's house was one of the few that had kept some
relation to Earth styles by installing a couple of windows in the second
story, and it would give a perfect view of the street. He followed the
old man up the stairs.

* * * * *

Two other men were already in the surprisingly well-furnished room, at
the little table set up near the window. Bruce Gordon recognized one as
Randolph, the publisher of the little opposition paper. The man's pale
blondness, weak eyes, and generally rabbity expression totally belied
the courage that had permitted him to keep going at his hopeless task of
trying to clean up Marsport. The _Crusader_ was strictly a one-man
weekly, against Mayor Wayne's _Chronicle_, with its Earth-comics and
daily circulation of over a hundred thousand. Wayne apparently let the
paper stay in business to give himself a talking point about fair play;
but Randolph walked with a limp from the last working over he had
received.

"Hi, Gordon," he said. His thin, high voice was cool and reserved, in
keeping with the opinion he had expressed publicly of the police as a
body. But he did not protest Corey's selection of a partner. "This is Ed
Praeger. He's an engineer on our railroad."

Gordon acknowledged the introduction automatically. He'd almost
forgotten that Marsport was the center of a thinly populated area,
stretching for a thousand miles in all directions beyond the city,
connected by the winding link of the electric monorail. "So there really
is a surrounding countryside," he said.

Praeger nodded. He was a big, open-faced man, just turning bald. His
handshake was firm and friendly. "Ther