another souvenir of his active service
days, a thin-bladed knife in a slip-sheath. Gefty worked the fastenings
of the sheath over his left wrist and up his forearm under his coat,
tested the release to make sure it was functioning, and shook his coat
sleeve back into place.

The passage was still quiet. Gefty moved softly over to one of the
chairs, took a small cushion from it and pitched it out in front of the
entrance.

There was a hiss. The cushion turned in midair into a puff of bright
white fire. Gefty aimed his gun high at the far passage wall just beyond
the entrance and pulled the trigger. It was a projectile gun. He heard
the slug screech off the slick plastic bulkhead and go slamming down the
passage. Somebody out there made a startled, incoherent noise. But not
the kind of a noise a man makes when he's just been hit.

"If you come in here armed," Gefty called, "I'll blow your head off.
Want to stop this nonsense now?"

There was a moment's silence. Then Maulbow's voice replied shakily from
the passage. He seemed to be standing about twenty feet back from the
room.

"If you'll end your thoughtless attempts at interference, Rammer," he
said, "there will be no trouble." He was speaking with the restraint of
a man who is in a state of cold fury. "You're endangering us all. You
must realize that you have no understanding of what you are doing."

Well, the last could be true enough. "We'll talk about it," Gefty said
without friendliness. "I haven't done anything yet, but I'm not just
handing the ship over to you. And what have you done with Miss Ruse?"

Maulbow hesitated again. "She's in the map room," he said then. "I ...
it was necessary to restrict her movements for a while. But you might as
well let her out now. We must reach an agreement without loss of time."

Gefty glanced over his shoulder at the small closed door of the map
room. There was no lock on the door, and he had heard no sound from
inside; this might be some trick. But it wouldn't take long to find out.
He backed up to the wall, pushed the door open and looked inside.

Kerim was there, sitting on a chair in one corner of the tiny room. The
reason she hadn't made any noise became clear. She and the chair were
covered by a rather closely fitting sack of transparent, glistening
fabric. She stared out through it despairingly at Gefty, her lips moving
urgently. But no sound came from the sack.

Gefty called angrily, "Maulbow--"

"Don't exc