A low animal grunt from the listeners. Their faces were as hard as flint.

Price shouted, "Would the Vurna be so anxious to get me back if they'd just sent me out as a spy? You heard Sawyer."

The Chief of the Louisianas said, "It would be a very smart trick for them to say so, for just that reason."

"And how is it," cried the Chief of the Arkansas, "that right away the minute you turn up, Arrin says that about attacking the Citadel? Doesn't that show they know something, and want to know more?"

"I should think that was obvious," said Price. "There hasn't been a plane in the air for two generations. All of a sudden there is one. Wouldn't the Vurna want to know where you got it, and whether you're building more like it? And do you suppose they'd figure that with a weapon like that you _wouldn't_ be planning an attack of some kind on them?"

That was good sense, and they thought it over, muttering among themselves. Price began to feel he was getting somewhere, and marshaled his words for the final argument. Then the Chief of the Oklahomas spoke up and said,

"My word would be to kill this man and hand his body, and the plane, to Arrin. That way we comply, but not to his advantage. Arrin knows no more than when he started, but we look innocent. We look as though we have no use for a plane. And when their backs are turned, we go ahead as we planned all along."

And that sounded better yet, even to Price. Especially since he knew better than any of them the relative usefulness of one Beechcraft as a weapon against the kind of forces the Star Lords had.

But he knew if they began to think of that he was finished. So he said, "Listen, you need that plane. It can reconnoiter, it can carry bombs--"

"Shut up," said someone fiercely. "Shut up, all of you. I hear something."

They quieted, and listened. Price could not hear anything but the tense mass breathing of the men. Then on the far side of the room first one man and then several began to dig like dogs after a rabbit into the heaped-up rubble.

"Here it is! Here it is--look!"

"What is it? Let's see."

"Ain't nothing but a little bitty box--"

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