about the deal?_

_That's the good news_, said the second suited figure as it came from
the airlock of the grounded spaceboat. _Another five million._

The detective, hidden behind the nearby crag of rock, listened and
watched for a minute or so while the two men began unloading cases of
foodstuffs from the spaceboat. Then, satisfied that it was perfectly
safe, he aimed his gun and shot twice in rapid succession.

The range was almost point-blank, and there was, of course, no need to
take either gravity or air resistance into account.

The pellets of the shotgun-like charge that blasted out from the gun
were small, needle-shaped, and massive. They were oriented point-forward
by the magnetic field along the barrel of the weapon. Of the hundreds of
charges fired, only a few penetrated the spacesuits of the targets, but
those few were enough. The powerful drug in the needle-pointed head of
each tiny crystal went directly into the bloodstream of each target.

Each man felt an itching sensation. He had less than two seconds to
think about it before unconsciousness overtook him and he slumped
nervelessly.

Gun in hand, the detective ran across the intervening space quickly, his
body only a few degrees from the horizontal, and his toes paddling
rapidly to propel him over the rough rock.

He braked himself to a halt and slapped air patches over the areas where
his charges had struck the men's suits, sealing the tiny air leaks, and,
at the same time, driving more of the tiny needles into their skins.
They would be out for a long time.

Neither of them had yet fallen to the ground. That would take several
minutes under this low gravity. He left them to drop and headed toward
the open airlock.

This was what he had been waiting for all those nineteen days in
cataleptic hypnosis. He couldn't have cut his way into the hideout from
the outside; he had had to wait until it was opened, and that time had
come only with the supply ship.

Once in the airlock, he touched the control stud that would close the
outer door, pump air into the waiting room, and open the inner door.
Here was his greatest point of danger--greater, even, than the danger of
coming to the planetoid itself, or the danger of waiting nineteen days
in a cataleptic trance for the coming of the supply ship. If the ones
who remained within suspected anything--anything at all!--then his
chances of coming out of this alive were practically nil.

But there was no