t, you're finished anyway."

"Destroy, Captain?" The senile voice turned silky. "No, we want that
machine intact."

"If you'll guarantee Ann's safety and mine--"

"You have an exaggerated idea of your own importance. You would have
been useful to us, particularly since you have been a Consolidated
employee. But this thing you blundered into up there destroys your
value entirely. It makes you potentially as dangerous as the Saymer
patent. That's my opinion.

"The other three who share the Von Rausch secret have an equal vote in
deciding the issue. They may reverse my decision. I've asked them to
come here, and I'm waiting for them now."

The old man was so intent upon making a logical explanation of the
death sentence he pronounced--without putting it into words--that he
didn't notice Hunter edging closer to the desk. Captain Hunter saw no
chance for a reprieve when the other three arrived. Why wait? Having
fought on the frontier, Hunter was aware of a property of the Venusian
crystal which possibly the old man did not know. It was impervious to
blaster fire.

Hunter acted with the split-second timing of an experienced spaceman.
He swung his body in a flying tackle against the old man's chair and
in the same swift motion pushed himself into the leg cubicle carved in
the crystal.

As the chair toppled and before he realized his own danger, the old
man cried the code word that triggered the wall blasters. He was
instantly caught in the deadly cross-fire.

As the weapons slid back into the wall slots, Hunter leaped for the
door, and passed quickly through it. The outer hall was empty. He
sprinted for the walk-way, the echoes of the blast still ringing in
his ears.

A destination marker glowed above a nearby metro-entry. It told him he
was on the Twenty-eighth level of center-city. On a large, public
Tri-D screen Hunter saw a picture of the strike mob in the industrial
area. That was all the data he needed. If the mob was still in the
streets, Eric Young was still manipulating the transmitter.

Hunter took an unchartered autojet and dialed as his destination the
U.F.W. clinic. It was the largest structure in the industrial area,
made from luminous, pink, Martian stone, which had been imported at
great cost--and with a blaze of publicity.

Completed only three years before, the U.F.W. clinic had been given a
continuous flood of publicity. Numerous Tri-D public service programs
had explored its wards, its labora