ad to travel out
here, all that distance, to be turned down. They looked on me as their
great white hope. They couldn't really believe I would turn them down.
Couldn't let themselves believe it, I guess. They're scared,
Helen--bright green scared."

"I know. But if it weren't for the fact that I have certain pretensions
to being a lady, I would have booted that Gerrol into orbit without a
spacesuit."

"Oh?"

"He implied," Helen said angrily, "that you were a coward. That you were
afraid to face the Nipe."

The detective chuckled. "I hope you didn't say anything."

"I wanted to," she admitted. "I wanted to tell him that guns were easy
to buy, that all he had to do was buy one and go after the Nipe himself.
I would like to have seen his face if I'd asked him how scared _he_ was
of the beast. But I didn't say a word. They weren't talking to me,
anyway; they were talking to each other."

"I'd almost be willing to bet that Nguma disagreed with Gerrol. Nguma
didn't think I was a physical coward; he thought I was a moral coward."

"How'd you know?"

"Intuition. Just from the way he talked and acted. He felt the failure
more than the others because he felt that there was no hope left at all.
He was quite certain that I, myself, did not believe the Nipe could be
caught--by me or anyone else. He thinks that I turned down the job
because I know I'd fail and I don't want to have a failure on my record.
Not _that_ big a failure."

"That's ridiculous, of course," the girl said angrily.

The detective noticed a faint note in her voice. _She thinks the same as
Nguma_, he thought, _but she doesn't want to admit it to herself_. He
massaged his closed eyes with the tips of his fingers. _Maybe she's
right_, he thought. _Maybe they're both right._ Aloud, he said, "Well,
we've had our little diversion. Let's get back to work."

"Yes, sir. You want the BenChaim file again?"

"Yes. I've got to figure that tricky line down to a T, or we may never
see that boy again. We haven't much time, either--two weeks at most."

She went over to the file cabinet and took out several heavy folders.
"Imagine," she said, almost to herself, "imagine them trying to get you
away from here when you have a kidnap case to solve. They must be out of
their minds."

_There was no kidnap case six months ago_, the detective thought. _She
knows that's not the reason. She's only trying to convince herself. Why
did I turn them down?_

His mind veered awa