you and that John Stern. If word got back to the Federation—" Skardoth shook his head. "No. I'll have to silence you the way I did him."

Stern clamped his lips together. So I'm silenced, eh? He tightened his grasp on the ledge, pulled himself up, kicked at the window.

The glass burst inward in a tinkling shower. Stern catapulted himself through the shattered window, and in one quick bound he leaped on Skardoth and knocked the big man sprawling to the floor.

Skardoth rolled over and bashed a fist upward. Stern gave with the blow, sucked in his breath, and raked his fist into Skardoth's teeth.

Skardoth tried to stand up, but another fist smashed into him, smearing his nose across his face like so much putty. Another fist, and then another hit the dark faced man. He collapsed as though he had been clubbed by a baseball bat.

Stern stood over the fallen man, clenching and reclenching his fists. He could hardly hear his own words, but he knew they were words of imprecation.

After a moment, he turned, to look at Elizabeth.

He walked over and took the magneclamps off her wrists.

"What are you going to do now, Johnny?" she asked as she flexed her wrists.

Stern looked bleakly at the mangled figure on the floor.

"I'd like to kill him. It's because of him that you and I have been condemned to die here." Then he stopped and grinned. "On the other hand, if we could find the ship he's been using to get from here to the stars, we could find a little world of our own; we could—"

She stood up then, and smiled at him. "Yorkan Varr, we know you're innocent. There's no need for you to run."

"We?" he asked. "Who's we? I simply did my duty; I only—"

"Shhhh!" she interrupted. "The Council of Judges has known for a long time that this planet needed correction. But, according to the law, the Judges couldn't interrupt. They sent me first, and then you. It took both of us to do the job."

Stern heard a slight hum outside the window of the eighteenth floor suite. When he looked out, he saw the vague outline of an interstellar patrol ship. A man in a Patrol uniform stuck his head in the window.

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