en I saw him running, dodging, a hail of stones flying round his head;
someone or something small and cloaked and agile. Behind him the
still-faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understand
the cries; but they were out for blood, and I knew it.

I said briefly, "Trouble coming," just before the mob spilled out into
the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his
head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get
even a fleeting impression of his face--human or nonhuman, familiar or
bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for
the gateway and safety.

And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring over
half the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition which
permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they
came to a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side.

I stepped up on the lower step of the Headquarters building, and looked
them over.

Most of them were _chaks_, the furred man-tall nonhumans of the Kharsa,
and not the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked with
filth and disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two in
the crowd were humans, the dregs of the Kharsa. But the star-and-rocket
emblem blazoned across the spaceport gates sobered even the wildest
blood-lust somewhat; they milled and shifted uneasily in their half of
the square.

For a moment I did not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw him
crouched, not four feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneously
the mob saw him, huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl of
frustration and rage went ringing round the square. Someone threw a
stone. It zipped over my head, narrowly missing me, and landed at the
feet of the black-leathered guard. He jerked his head up and gestured
with the shocker which had suddenly come unholstered.

The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Terran law has been
written in blood and fire and exploding atoms; and the line is drawn
firm and clear. The men of Spaceforce do not interfere in the old town,
or in any of the native cities. But when violence steps over the
threshold, passing the blazon of the star and rocket, punishment is
swift and terrible. The threat should have been enough.

Instead a howl of abuse went up from the crowd.

"_Terranan!_"

"Son of the Ape!"

The Spaceforce guards were shoulder to shoulder behind me now. The
snub-