until I remember that it continues because of your own proud stupidity. If ever you people of Earth had been willing to work with us--but let it be. And now I warn you, Sawyer."

He seemed to grow tall, grim, alien, the spokesman of inhuman forces. Price felt the skin grow cold along his back, and his belly knotted tight with the pricking of fear.

Arrin said, "If you are planning an attack upon the Citadel, forget it. We will slaughter you without mercy--not because we wish to, but because we must--"

Price caught the sharp intake of breath from the men beside him, and suddenly he understood many things he had not understood before.

Arrin was still speaking. "I will give you three days in which to deliver to me the plane and the man who flew it. If this is not done, we will be forced to use harsher measures. You understand?"

Sawyer said, in a tone as cold as Arrin's, "Is that all?"

"One more thing. Keep your hunters out of the Belt. It is a military zone, not a game preserve. Any more incursions will be regarded as a possible invasion--"

Again Twist made a sharp, harsh sound in the darkness.

"--and we will make of it a blasted barren where not even a mouse or a beetle can survive. Consider that, Sawyer."

Arrin turned and walked away, the two men and the woman falling in behind him. Price watched the dark-crimson figure with the bright hair until he could see it no longer, and it dawned on him, as though the two things had a connection, that he was alive and living in this crazy world of Sawyers and Citadels and invaders from the stars, that these were his realities now and he had better wake up and grapple with them, or he would die--and the death would be for real, and not any portion of a dream.

The aerodyne took off with a scream and a whistle. The crowd in the square began to break up. Sawyer turned and came into the house, the chiefs and the sub-chiefs following him.

Burr opened the shutters, and a welcome breath of air came into the stifling room, with a last gleam of dying sunlight. Price looked at his companions. They were watching him, their eyes sharp and hostile.

"So that's why you were so frantic for the plane," he said. "You're planning an attack."

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