d perfectly as a lighter, too, till you pushed in on a little
gismo on the side. Then, instead of producing a flame, it squirted
out a small jet of sleep gas. It would knock out a man; it would
almost knock out a Zarathustra veldtbeest. I'd bought it from a
spaceman on the _Cape Canaveral_. I'd always suspected that he'd
stolen it on Terra, because it was an expensive little piece of work,
but was I going to ride a bicycle six hundred and fifty light-years to
find out who it belonged to? One of the chemists' shops at Port Sandor
made me up some fills for it, and while I had never had to use it, it
was a handy thing to have in some of the places I had to follow
stories into, and it wouldn't do anybody any permanent damage, the way
a gun would.

"Yes; it's down in my room. I'll get it for you," I said.

"Be careful, Bish," Dad said. "That gang would kill you sooner than
look at you."

"Who, me?" Bish staggered into a table and caught hold of it. "Who'd
wanna hurt me? I'm just good ol' Bish Ware. _Good_ ol' Bish! nobody
hurt him; he'sh everybody's friend." He let go of the table and
staggered into a chair, upsetting it. Then he began to sing:

"_Come all ye hardy spacemen, and harken while I tell
Of fluorine-tainted Nifflheim, the Planetary Hell._"

Involuntarily, I began clapping my hands. It was a superb piece of
acting--Bish Ware sober playing Bish Ware drunk, and that's not an
easy role for anybody to play. Then he picked up the chair and sat
down on it.

"Who do you have around Hunters' Hall, and how do I get past them?"
he asked. "I don't want a clipful from somebody on my own side."

Nip Spazoni got a pencil and a pad of paper and began drawing a plan.

"This is Second Level Down," he said. "We have a car here, with a
couple of men in it. It's watching this approach here. And we have a
ship's boat, over here, with three men in it, and a 7-mm machine gun.
And another car--no, a jeep, here. Now, up on the First Level Down, we
have two ships' boats, one here, and one here. The password is
'Exotic,' and the countersign is 'Organics.'" He grinned at Murell.
"Compliment to your company."

"Good enough. I'll want a bottle of liquor. My breath needs a little
touching up, and I may want to offer somebody a drink. If I could get
inside that place, there's no telling what I might be able to do. If
one man can get in and put a couple of guards to sleep, an army can
get in after him."

Brother, I thought, if