if you like," replied Garth. "I think I better check the road guards once more. If those plug-uglies smell out your plan to desert them our lives won't be worth a punctured isotope."

"You know I'd go with you," Dollard sighed, "but I fear my presence antagonizes the lower classes somehow. Considering the pay they're drawing down, I'll never understand why, either."

Garth strode to the lodge's steel-plated front entrance, a formidable barrier designed to match the strength of a space cruiser's main airlock. Standing opposite the heavy circular plates, he gestured before the five heat-sensitive electronic tumblers and the heavy door swung open on oiled hinges. When he stepped outside, the barrier closed behind him.

Alone inside the timbered hide-away, Edwin Dollard immediately shed the affected air of corpulent lassitude he generally displayed in the presence of others. Now that the deadline for his attempt to sneak off the planet approached, it was essential that he attend to the completion of his personal preparations. Above the mantel of the lodge's thermionic fireplace was hung a brilliant cascading stereo of Yosemite Falls in misty motion. Dollard pressed a hidden button. The mantel sank to ground level and the stereo swung outward, bringing into view a shining cubical locker of beryllium steel.

From this hiding place, Dollard withdrew two loaded hydroflame pistols. These he strapped under each armpit. Next, he brought out a palm-sized stunner which he concealed in his hand by aid of a wrist-strap. The fourth object to emerge was a small chunky bag from which dangled tightly-drawn leather thongs. Dollard opened the pouch and poured the contents on to his sweaty palm; a thousand carats of glistening "Syrtis diamonds" from his own private mines. The rarity and value of these jewels, he knew, would be increased by the collapse of the terrestrial civilization that had refined them and cut and polished their rainbow facets.

These gleaming objects of unfixed price were the guardians that would stand by him during the months it would take to reestablish himself among the colonies on Venus. Not only would they purchase luxuries, but also new servants, fabrication plants, ore boats; possibly, even governments. Above all, they would serve to bribe Dollard's way through the tight network of Venusian immigration officials who might seek—in accord with the laws of their sparsely-settled but independent world—to forbid his landing as a refugee from a diseased planet.

  full hour passed before Garth returned, an hour that Edwin Dollard spent pacing the narrow confines of the lodge's central room. His eyes constantly consulted the slow march of minutes on the luminescent dial of his platinum chronometer ... for while it was not imperative that the space yacht he had refurbished should soar starward at the precise hour agreed upon, there did reign a crucial period of four or five hours immediately at hand, during which the most advantageous passage to Venus should be commenced.

When Garth finally reappeared through the steel doorway, his thin long face reflected the strain he also felt as departure time neared.

"I checked the roadway two miles up the valley," he reported. "No activity in sight. There was a riot at Leevining, or so one of your guards told me—and a big pitched battle in Bishop between lowlanders and highlanders."

"Another day or two and they'd be swarming all over this region," Dollard said.

"You can bet their first reaction would be to dismantle the ship at sight," Garth informed him. "Lucky we're getting out in time. If the mobs couldn't pilot the vessel themselves, it'd be human nature to see to it that nobody else got to do so, either. Misery loves company—even in the face of death."

"The scum," said Dollard. He donned a jaunty space cap he had often worn on pleasure flights to his outlying holdings. Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he grinned: "Well, Garth, shall we go?"

Garth nodded. He detached a torch that was clasped to his waist, then opened the tunnel door that was carved out of a braced section of the rear wall where the lodge had been built to shore into the mountainside. Entering, the two men threaded a winding route through a narrow dripping passageway, guided by the thin yellow beam of Garth's light. They emerged several hundred feet farther on in a valley of long shadows, cut off from the world on three sides by abrupt cliffs. No ravines opened on this valley. Only by a desperate climb over the surrounding peaks could it be reached—and hence it had been immune to spying eyes. Here, amounting to a feat of superb pilotage in itself, Dollard's vessel had been landed weeks earlier in anticipation of just such a need as it now served.

Sturdy shrubbery screened the tunnel exit, although concealment had not proved to be necessary. As they broke into the light, Dollard and Garth pushed aside stunted conifers and half-stumbled, half-ran down a shale-strewn incline which led them to the valley's floor.

A short northward walk brought them in view of the refitted space craft. Based on stubby fins, it pointed vertically at the sky.

The high sharp ridges surrounding the valley blotted out the late afternoon sun, casting gloom upon the sheer rock walls and overhanging escarpments, and, despite his previous acclimatization to Sierra altitudes, the thin sharp air made breathing difficult for Dollard.

A short distance from where the vessel was cradled, the bodies of five coveralled workmen lay in stiff huddled forms. At the sight, Dollard grunted. "Efficient toxin," he commented. "Good work."

alking contemptuously past the bodies, the tycoon approached a work shack which had housed the space ship mechanics. He picked up an aluminum platform-ladder which rested on the trampled grass. Swinging it above his head, he brought it back to the vessel and hooked it against the rear fin so that the tubular platform lodged itself against the ship's lowest loading hatch.

He turned to Garth. "Too bad we can't run an engine-to-mech check, before taking off. But no mechanics."

Garth said, "Knocking off the men was your idea."

"My conscience'll rest easy with it," Dollard returned. "I was making a joke."

"Very funny joke," said Garth.

"Very funny for you, too," said Dollard.

His fingers squeezed the rubber-mounted grips of the stunner concealed in the palm of his left hand. A slight eye-stinging flash burst in the fading light. As the wave moved outward from the tiny device, Garth stiffened and pitched forward, bouncing perceptibly before his body finally succumbed to the compulsion of gravity.

Dollard aimed the hard toe of his metallic shoe and kicked him viciously in the temple. Garth's body did not stir.

"I would have liked an engine-to-mechanic check very much," Dollard said thoughtfully. "But these things can't always be planned neat enough to meet every detail. There has to be leeway for diversive action—should the situation merit it. In this case, the situation seems to have merited it rather fully."

He began to climb the narrow aluminum rungs of the propped-up ladder. After reaching the platform, he stood on the grilled support, his fat panting bulk braced against the upper chord of the stabilizer fin. He looked back briefly at Garth's unconscious form on the ground.

"You were a fool, Garth! A fool to believe that I would take you along with me—to share a new empire. Know when I lost complete respect for your intelligence? It was when you banked that past services for me would assure you of future salvation. Very stupid. Didn't you know your usefulness would end for me the moment I left Terra? Why