that you wanted to help on?"

Price sensed from the other's fierceness that he was in imminent danger, that something he had said had deepened suspicion.

He almost welcomed the interruption that saved him from answering now, though it was a sound that raised the short hairs on his neck.

The sound of shrieking power across the sky, the sound of the sky-hunters from the Citadel....

"That's the damned star-spawn coming down here again!" said one of the men behind Sawyer.

The old man got to his feet with amazing alacrity. He rapped an order to Twist and Burr, pointing to Price.

"Take him upstairs. If he makes a peep, cut his throat--but do it quiet."

Little more than a minute later, Price was in a hot, dusty little room. It had gun-slots in its heavy wooden shutters, and they let level bars of golden light into the room.

He heard the whine of the flier, coming down fast. He went to the gun-slot.

"No," said Burr.

Price turned and looked at him. He kept his voice low. "The hell with you," he said. "You can stand behind me with your knife. I'm not going to yell. But I'm going to see."

He heard Burr and Twist come up close behind him, as he peered out the wide slot.

Out in the green square, a white craft marked with a curious insigne was making a vertical landing. He thought it was a type of aerodyne. He had never seen one in flight, back in that strangely far-off and quickly-fading time from which he had come, but he had seen sketches and a working model. This seemed to be a refinement of the same principle, faster than a jet and maneuverable as a toy balloon. His hands itched to fly it.

He saw the insigne on its side--a golden sunburst with what looked like a many-colored, many-faceted globe at its heart. He did not know what it signified but he knew what it was. The mark of the Star Lords, of the Vurna. And even as he looked, four of them came out of the craft.

They came along the street to where Sawyer and the other Chiefs and a little crowd of leather-clad men silently waited. No one had a gun, no one made a motion. Yet that dusty street was electric with a hatred so deep and strong and quivering 

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