looked with distaste at the bodies, but without repugnance or fear.

Sy hurriedly thrust a bulging pouch of gold into Loor's hand. "Lock this place up," he directed, "and start walking immediately for Haldane. We've got to assume we're all known to Sur-Malic Intelligence. Arna and I will remove the outside evidence. All we need now is a little chunk of time!"

He walked out warily and soon pulled away in the dead officers' vehicle. Arna followed close behind.

Having driven slowly back to Dirik, Sy parked beside a row of similar vehicles to the rear of a city food market in the merchandise district. He walked to where Arna waited and climbed into his own conveyance. "Head for our little love-nest, slave," he directed. "You'll want your toothbrush, and it would be a shame to leave my hard-won gold behind."

Arna breathed excitedly. "Are we leaving the planet, Sy? Is our work completed? Was that what your message meant?"

"My, what a curiosity!" he taunted. He placed an arm about her shoulders. "We're going into seclusion," he leered. "I'll have you all to myself for days and days! Won't that be fun?"

Arna squirmed. "Stop it, Sy—I almost hit that old woman! And stop making those pebbles jump up in the road!" She glanced at him bitingly. "I suppose you've got things all arranged so we'll have to hide in a single room!"

"The choice is yours, love." He waved expansively. "Either we steal a scoutship or—how's the Needle for speed?"

"Oh, Sy! Can we actually get the Needle? She'll outstrip any warship! And she has a nice private compartment, with a good solid deck outside it for you. I'll loan you a pillow, maybe."

They took from the apartment only what would fit into small shoulder bags that were matched to their uniforms. Sy briefed Arna while they sped to the vast enclosure which walled off hundreds of impounded alien ships.

His towering rage was very evident even as he climbed from the ground vehicle. A callow sentry straightened at the approach of his glittering insignia. Sy fixed him with a malific eye. The youth's mouth began to twitch.

"Where," shouted Sy furiously, "is the moronic officer-in-charge?"

The sentry tried to speak.

"Never mind, you brainless rodent!" Sy roared. "Why wasn't that accursed League ship delivered to the testing grounds this morning?"

The boy began to stammer.

"Quiet, you miserable lump of offal!" screamed Sy. He turned and brutally cuffed Arna toward the gate. "Get in there, filthy drone, and raise that ship before I kick your belly to pulp!"

The sentry unlocked the high gate frantically. He watched with ashen features as Sy followed Arna across the yard, cursing, striking and reviling her.

Out of the guard's sight, Sy quickly located the Needle and broke the port seal. Arna clambered in, adjusted controls to planetary drive, wakened the powerful engines to a sighing song of readiness and then ran to her bunk to strap herself down. Sy sealed the port and dived into the soft, deep clutches of the pilot's gimbaled throne. Within seconds the craft darted for the horizon, veered, and streaked out from the planet on a straight drive for the blinding orb of Pronuleon.

A hundred miles or more from the blue world behind, the Needle shot through the detector field of a Sur-Malic scoutship. Sy didn't bother to switch on audio for a challenge. Grimly, he located the scoutship's relative position by the pip on his detector screen and stabbed a pattern of buttons to spew quickly-congealing clouds of magnetized dust into automatically calculated trajectory paths. He smiled with relief as pips sparked into life, indicating the interception of homing missiles. Out of the pursuer's range, he set an erratic course for the sun and called to Arna.

For three clock periods they hugged blazing, searing Pronuleon in an orbit that was almost too close for safety. Refrigeration units strained far beyond specified tolerances. Twice, tail toward the inferno for minimum radiation absorption, they barely fought clear of stupendous, surging tentacles of the shifting, agonized gravitational fields of Pronuleon. But they could not be detected so close to a raging sun.

Arna, wretched and exhausted, the thin fabric of a single garment clinging wetly to her body, leaned wearily against the throne. "Isn't it possible they think we took a fast course for Sol?" she sighed.

"Very probable," Sy whispered gauntly. Only an hour before he had revealed what the girl already suspected—that his code message had been the long-awaited signal for the entire Interstellar League fleet to ring the void about Pronuleon II. "But on this mission we can't take chances."

Arna laughed feebly. "Can't take chances!" she echoed, and shook her head.

Sy attempted a smile, sopped the streaming sweat from his eyes and studied a chronometer. He clamped a drinking tube, then let it fall from his mouth. "Get on some clothes and G-shoes, woman. We're going to keep an appointment."

The Needle's rotation slowly died; the vessel turned, lined up with Pronuleon's orbit, burst her bonds with a tangential spurt and then arced away from the seething fury behind.

Free of the obliterating sea of sun static, Sy threw open all detection and reception circuits and flung his detector field to its farthest reaches, dimming its accuracy but increasing its range. Immediately he stared in consternation at the activity in the three-dimensional depths of his screen. "Arna!" he called hoarsely. "Arna!" The girl ran clinkingly to him on jointed shoe-plates. "We're damn near too late," he groaned. "Look, the fleets are approaching each other!" The tiny red screen dot which indicated their position showed them to be on a course that would slice directly between both fleets. Sy leaped from the throne and fairly threw Arna into its confines. He braced his metal-shod feet on the deck and seized a ring cleat beside the control panel. "Steady as you go!" he gritted. "This is it—and we've got to make it!"

"Sy! Can you control the gadgets from this distance?"

"Yeah—but we've got to stay in planetary range. Don't leave the Pronuleon system." His fingers sped along a row of knobs. "I've got to call our fleet."

"Contact the fleet now? But Sy—"

"Quiet, honey!" He glanced at her once, quickly. "I rigged those gadgets like I intended to."

"Sy!" It was almost a scream. "What have you—"

"Shut up!" he snapped. "And that's an order!" Ignoring secrecy, code and even special wavelength, he signaled the League flagship on an open channel. He arranged a three-way video hook-up between the Needle, Admiral Grimes on the Forward Star and Dr. Horace Wilton on the Mars Moon. "No time," he ground out. "Operation set up as scheduled—but you won't have to fire. In five minutes all enemy crews will be flat under eight G's; when ships stop, grapple and board. Out!" He broke contact and turned to Arna. "Skitter and spit dust—use it all, but keep us clear for three minutes!" He locked both hands on the cleat and closed his eyes in concentration.

In the deep recesses of his mind, he created a clear picture of a typical, prototype butterfly gimmick. He imagined it in the approximate position it would be to keep a ship spinning slowly on its longitudinal axis—to exert the mild centrifugal force permitted for battle alert and preliminary maneuver. Then he willed the little wings to bend downward—slowly—past the null-G setting—to fold—down ... to kiss ... to close....

After a seeming century, and from a great distance, Arna's voice reached him, dragged him up from autohypnotic depths. "Sy! Sy! They've stopped firing! The League's closing in! Sy!"

He straightened, relaxed his bloodless grip on the cleat, drew a deep, shuddering breath, shook his head to clear it. Throbbing pains began to course from his arms and shoulders, where they had been buffeted against the