to the couch all hunched over, ducked his head humbly half-a-dozen times, and pushed the box over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and sniffed, and then turned to Attaboy with a full-blown Satanic grin. I could hear her question reverberate away over where I was.

"Who from?" asked Akroida.

That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code at all.

"Who from?" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush. "Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly remarkable jewels," he confessed coyly.

Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. "His name?" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my direction. "Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?"

Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. "I—uh—the stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention to the—uh—trader. He does seem to resemble an—ah—earthman." He ducked his head and fearfully waited.

A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. "An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?"

Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly.

The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a maddened stallion and began to thrash around and flail her couch with that dragon's tail of hers.

I began to quake all over. My nice little jail, I thought frantically. My cozy little cell. Those dear sweet guards. I'd left them all to be eaten alive by that purple devil. Why didn't I bat my silly brains out on my cell wall when this idea first sneaked in? Marooned on that damned hassock a hundred feet above the floor I began to think, and fast.

"Bring him here!" roared Akroida, tapping it out so fast it sounded like gunfire. She gnashed her mandibles and glared until I started shriveling. "Bring him here! He'll dare to come around and insult me, will he? I'll flail him limb from limb and chew his bones to shreds! I'll bite him into chunks! I'll.... Bring him here!"

She made a furious lunge at Attaboy. Trembling and blanching to a muddy lavender, he got out of there and scrambled 

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