st before realizing it.

Mason caught a glimpse of Earthwomen, being led as though drugged into
the yawning flank of the silent vessel.

There was a sudden movement in the darkness to his left, and he heard
the start of an outcry on the Ihelian's lips. But it was all he heard
or saw. There was a quick knifing pain in his skull, and he crumpled
to the ground.

III

"You may wait in here, sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was
ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main
conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing
was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it
flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within
her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask
itself had made her the efficient Space officer she was. And at the
moment she was glad for it, because it also concealed the anxious
uncertainty that twisted coldly inside her.

She was to wait, the Council had informed her. Wait, while the
information she had given them was analyzed, digested. As though,
perhaps, what she had said was part of some insidious plot; as though
it were too fantastic to be the truth.

They had not even immediately authorized the dispatch of a patrol
cruiser to the spot where she'd left Lance and Kriijorl over two hours
ago, and by now--?

She tried not to think or what the Earthman and the Ihelian might be
facing, alone and in the darkness. Nor of the conclusions to which the
Council, called into emergency session by the President General
himself when her information had been rapidly relayed through the
correct channels to him, might arrive.

She could only wait.

And her waiting was terminated with an abrupt suddenness that made the
twisting cold thing inside her a churning confusion. It had been only
minutes, hardly minutes.

Only one of them came into the small room where she sat. She rose
quickly to attention. It was an aide to the President General himself;
a brevet-Colonel wearing the uniform of the World Police.

"Sergeant Kent," he said, "it is the Council's decision that you be
placed under temporary arrest. Your case will be heard at the next
sitting of the martial court to which your unit is assigned. If you
will accompany me, please...."

"May I ask, sir, what the charge against me is?" Her voice was steady
by cultivated habit.

"You are to be held on suspicion of acting as accessory before and
a