at length. "I guess I'm jumpy. Let's go in now. I want a talk with Keith Randolph Marshall."

He waited for the slighter figure of the doctor to enter the airlock, waited until the inner sigh of atmosphere told he was inside. All of the while, Rufus stood tense, peering into a blackness that was so thick it was like a cushion. Then he, too, went through the airlock.

His metal arms moved swiftly, unfastening the middle of his space togging. Keith Randolph Marshall was signing a bunch of papers against a berylumin strut.

"Here," he grunted, screwing up his fountain pen and returning it to his coat pocket, "They're yours, every space scuttler! The Marshall lines are yours, lock, stock and barrel."

"I told you father would keep his bargain," said Alyce Marshall, clinging to the arm of the erstwhile dictator of the spacelanes. "I only hope he never regrets it."

"He won't," said Rufus drily. "He won't, because I'll never get hold of them."

Another helmet fastening came loose and the slender upper body of Dr. Haliburton appeared. He adjusted his glasses hurriedly and glared at Rufus Thallin. A strange smile of triumph lingered on the heavy lips of Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Don't mind him, Alyce," said Marshall. "I've kept my bargain. Next week, after you've rested, I'm going to stage a coming out party for you. He has the papers, hasn't he? Come on. Let's get out."

"Wait a minute!" cried Rufus sharply. "Yes, I have the papers. But they'd never let me file them, not with charges of kidnaping against me. And once convicted, a thing your lawyers could see to, it would be illegal for me to own any property in space! Isn't that true, Marshall?"

The space commerce king shrugged his shoulders.

"Its truth does not concern our bargain," he began evasively.

"Nor do the space police who followed you," went on Rufus calmly.

"What's that?" demanded Dr. Haliburton. "I assure you, we came in utmost secrecy, and that—" He stopped, having seen the plain guilt on the face of Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Oh, damn the man!" stormed Marshall angrily. "What if I did? I'm a man of my word, and he's a man of his. Yes, your jig is up! You might as well give yourself up 

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