d that nothing out of the ordinary is happening."

"Good. Let's go to the Municipal Building, first," Oscar said. "Take a
couple of hundred men, make a lot of noise, shoot out a few windows
and all yell, 'Hang Mort Hallstock!' loud enough, and he'll recall the
cops he has at Hunters' Hall to save his own neck. Then the rest of us
can make a quick rush and take Hunters' Hall."

"We'll have to keep our main force around Hunters' Hall while we're
demonstrating at the Municipal Building," Corkscrew Finnegan said. "We
can't take a chance on Ravick's getting away."

"I couldn't care less whether he gets away or not," Oscar said. "I
don't want Steve Ravick's blood. I just want him out of the
Co-operative, and if he runs out from it now, he'll never get back
in."

"You want him, and you want him alive," Bish Ware said. "Ravick has
close to four million sols banked on Terra. Every millisol of that's
money he's stolen from the monster-hunters of this planet, through the
Co-operative. If you just take him out and string him up, you'll have
the Nifflheim of a time getting hold of any of it."

That made sense to all the ship captains, even Joe Kivelson, after Dad
reminded him of how much the salvage job on the _Javelin_ was going to
cost. It took Sigurd Ngozori a couple of minutes to see the point, but
then, hanging Steve Ravick wasn't going to cost the Fidelity & Trust
Company anything.

"Well, this isn't my party," Glenn Murell said, "but I'm too much of a
businessman to see how watching somebody kick on the end of a rope is
worth four million sols."

"Four million sols," Bish said, "and wondering, the rest of your
lives, whether it was justice or just murder."

The Buddhist priest looked at him, a trifle startled. After all, he
was the only clergyman in the crowd; he ought to have thought of that,
instead of this outrageous mock-bishop.

"I think it's a good scheme," Dad said. "Don't mass any more men
around Hunters' Hall than necessary. You don't want the police to be
afraid to leave when Hallstock calls them in to help him at Municipal
Building."

Bish Ware rose. "I think I'll see what I can do at Hunters' Hall, in
the meantime," he said. "I'm going to see if there's some way in from
the First or Second Level Down. Walt, do you still have that sleep-gas
gadget of yours?"

I nodded. It was, ostensibly, nothing but an oversized pocket lighter,
just the sort of a thing a gadget-happy kid would carry around. It
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