were carrying pistols; they're part of this
survival-kit you make everybody carry, along with the emergency-rations
and the water-desilicator. Mr. Ferriera's wasn't loaded, but mine was.
When they rushed us, I shot a couple of them, and then picked up that
big knife...."

"That's why you're still alive," von Schlichten commented.

"We wouldn't be if you hadn't come along," she told him. "I never in
my life saw anything as beautiful as you coming through that mob
swinging that war-club!"

"Well, I never saw anything much more beautiful than those 40-mm's
beginning to land in the mob," von Schlichten replied.

The aircar swung out over Konkrook Channel and headed toward the
blue-gray Company buildings on Gongonk Island, and the Company
airport, swarming with lorries and airboats, where the ten
thousand-ton _Oom Paul Kruger_ had just come in from Keegark, and the
Company's one real warship, the cruiser _Procyon_, was lifting out for
Grank, in the North. Down at the southern tip of the island, the
three-thousand-foot globe of the spaceship _City of Pretoria_, from
Niflheim, was loading with cargo for Terra.

"Just what happened, while you and Mr. Ferriera were in Keeluk's
house. Miss Quinton?" Hideyoshi O'Leary asked, trying not to sound
official. "Was Keeluk with you all the time? Or did he go out for a
while, say fifteen or twenty minutes before you left?"

"Why, yes, he did." Paula Quinton looked surprised. "How did you guess
it? You see, a dog started barking, behind the house, and he excused
himself and...."

"A dog?" von Schlichten almost shouted. The other officers echoed him,
and on the front seat, Harry Quong said, "Coo-bli'me!"

"Why, yes...." Paula Quinton's eyes widened. "But there are no dogs on
Uller, except a few owned by Terrans. And wasn't there something
about ...?"

Von Schlichten had the radio-phone and was calling the command car at
the scene of the riot. The sergeant-driver answered.

"Von Schlichten here; my compliments to Captain Pedolsky, and tell him
he's to make immediate and thorough search of the house in front of
which the incident occurred, and adjoining houses. For his
information, that's Keeluk's house. Tell him to look for traces of
Governor-General Harrington's collie, or any of the other terrestrial
animals that have been disappearing--that goat, for instance, or those
rabbits. And I want Keeluk brought in, alive and in condition to be
interrogated. I'll send more troops, or