"I've been in private practise for several years since leaving the faculty of California School of Technology. An excellent pupil. Aptness for medicine. A future for him there, if he wants it....

"Since you speak of it," went on Dr. Haliburton curiously, "he was here only yesterday to talk over old times."

Marshall was tense as spring steel now and trying hard to conceal his extreme excitement.

"Then he's pretty good in a medical way?" he wanted to know savagely.

"Pretty good is no word for it!" exclaimed Dr. Haliburton. "Why, I saw him do a plastic operation once that would have stumped an old hand at surgery. It was on a Venus expedition of the faculty, and a man had become drunk and staggered into a grove of leper-plants. The flesh was peeling from both hands, and Rufus operated—with only a native dirk, mind you! He grafted plastic protoplasm to the tendons and saved both hands. An exceptionally fine bit of surgery...."

"Just what," demanded the dictator of spacelanes, "does he know about the Venus plague?"

Dark eyes narrowed and sparkled through the transparent lenses.

"Blue virus!" he exclaimed. "He's very interested. We discussed it at length, and also went over the records of your daughter's case. I gave her six months to live, as you know, and he—"

"That damned devil!" snorted Marshall in uncontrolled rage. "He was planning it all the time. Now he's kidnapped her and taken her to space."

For a moment the physician was stunned. He went quietly to a cabinet case and jerked open a drawer. His face above the beard became ashen.

"Her case records are gone," he said dazedly. "You must be right."

Incoherently, Marshall poured forth the story, and the savant listened incredulously, tugging at his trim beard.

"If she dies," shouted Marshall, swinging his fist, "he'll pay for it in the atomic blast chamber, with his life."

When the telecaster was silent, Dr. Haliburton stood for a long while, merely staring.

"No other would have dared!" he whispered awedly. "And there is a chance, a tiny chance. He risked his life on it. How I wish I had his courage!"

Rufus Thallin was afraid neither of his 

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