a hard voice. "O.K., you've had
your chance. We'll be back."

"I don't think I'll wait," said Morgan.

"You'll wait. We got you on a murder charge now. You'll wait. Wise
guy." He turned and walked away. The other man followed like a trained
hound.

* * * * *

After the door clanged, the man in the next cell whispered: "Well,
you're for it. They're gonna ask you questions."

Morgan said one obscene word and stood up. It was time to leave.

He had been searched thoroughly. They had left him only his clothes,
nothing else. They had checked to make sure that there were no
microminiaturized circuits on him. He was clean.

So they thought.

Carefully, he caught a thread in the lapel of his jacked and pulled it
free. Except for a certain springiness, it looked like an ordinary
silon thread. He looped it around one of the bars of his cell, high
up. The ends he fastened to a couple of little decorative hooks in his
belt--hooks covered with a shell of synthetic ruby.

Then he leaned back, putting his weight on the thread.

Slowly, like a knife moving through cold peanut butter, the thread
sank into the steel bar, cutting through its one-inch thickness with
increasing difficulty until it was half-way through. Then it seemed to
slip the rest of the way through.

He repeated the procedure thrice more, making two cuts in each of two
bars. Then he carefully removed the sections he had cut out. He put
one of them on the floor of his cell and carried the other in his
hand--three feet of one-inch steel makes a nice weapon if it becomes
necessary.

Then he stepped through the hole he had made.

The man in the next cell widened his eyes as Harry Morgan walked by.
But Morgan could tell that he saw nothing. He had only heard. His eyes
had been removed long before. It was the condition of the man that
convinced Morgan with utter finality that he had told the truth.

VII

Mr. Edway Tarnhorst felt fear, but no real surprise when the shadow in
the window of his suite in the Grand Central Hotel materialized into a
human being. But he couldn't help asking one question.

"How did you get there?" His voice was husky. "We're eighty floors
above the street."

"Try climbing asteroids for a while," said Commodore Sir Harry Morgan.
"You'll get used to it. That's why I knew Jack hadn't died
'accidentally'--he was murdered."

"You ... you're not carrying a gun," Tarnhorst said.

"Do I need one?"