boarded it, moved along the corridors and into the staterooms. But all was a shambles. The pirates had struck as usual: sudden, ruthlessly ramming; had smashed completely through this liner like an eggshell! He saw corpses half encased in spacesuits, but it had been a futile effort. Many of the passengers had holes blasted through them, tiny pencil-thin holes of concentrated atom-blasts at close range, mute evidence of the pirates' deadly work. The once gorgeous salons were stripped of the silks and fineries. Staterooms thoroughly looted. Even the corpses stripped of all personal jewelry and other finery.

The grim-faced young man, the only moving and living thing aboard, noticed all this but secondarily. His heart was pounding with a newly rising hope. For in none of the staterooms had he found her.

He moved through the ragged gap and out the other side of the ship. More drifting corpses, hugging the hull because of the slight gravity. Methodically he moved among them, pulling them around, thrusting them away.

And then—one he did not thrust away. His face beneath the helmet stared, and became suddenly anguished. He hugged the body tightly to him. Using the pistol, he propelled his way back through the hull. He carried the girl back along the main deck, and there laid her gently down away from the others. He stared down, his face twisting helplessly, his fists clenching and unclenching.

She had been young, lovely. Her face was somehow still beautiful, as he remembered it. She had died quickly, he saw, and was glad of that. He would leave her here on the deck, for he knew the Patrol men would tow this liner back to Earth, where she would wish to be.

He looked long, so that the vision of her would remain in his mind always; then he turned and strode firmly back to his cruiser. His face as he looked out to the stars was wet beneath the glass—but there was no one there to see. There was no one there to hear—but his lips moved in a grim and terrible oath.

George Marnay, of Tri-Planet News Service, tugged at the big guy's arm.

"Come on, now, what do you say? Let's get out of here. You've had enough of that stuff, and you're talking too much. You're heading for more trouble than you've ever seen in one night!"

The big man peered at the smaller one through a tangle of blonde hair which fell over blue and bleary eyes. Then he slammed his glass down on the bar and jerked his 

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