"And if I won't?"

"Get her up I said!" Boone's voice rang savage with menace.

Krobis' eyes wavered. Squatting, he dragged Eileen's limp body round till he could slide an arm beneath her and heave her up onto his shoulder.

Boone closed in to help support her. "You know what to tell the man at the lift, Krobis: Miss Rey's suddenly been taken ill, so you're relieving her from duty and assigning me to take her place."

Black eyes asmoulder, Krobis nodded.

"And in case you've got any sharp ideas--just remember no man alive can outrun a nerve charge...." Sliding his hand up under Eileen's service blouse to conceal his weapon, Boone jerked open the cabin door. In seconds, they had Eileen into the lift.

Then they were past the guard ... out on the ramp again ... into the black shadows on the far side of an emptied cargo carrier.

Boone stepped back while Krobis awkwardly lowered Eileen to the ramp. She moaned a little; that was all.Barely two minutes till grav-time now, the chronox said. 

Krobis straightened. "You'll never get away with this, Boone!" His voice was thick with hate. 

"Because you'll stop the grav-off, you mean?" Boone spun the nerve-gun's dial back to the temporary paralysis level. "I've thought of that, too, Krobis." He squeezed the trigger. 

The other's eyes went blank and glassy. He slumped beside Eileen on the ramp. 

Pivoting, Boone strode back to the ship. The hatchmen were already gathering with their sealers. The hum of the converters rose in an all-pervasive drone. 

Up in the tech quarters once more, Boone wryly slipped the card bearing Eileen's name from its bracket on the door and substituted his own. Then, going on into the cabin, he threw himself down at full length on the foamex bunk. He was tired, more tired than he could remember ever having been, with the utter weariness that comes of too much strain and tension. 

A moment later the signal light above the door flashed red. Then a momentary shifting said that the sphere was off the ground and rising, riding its great beam of anti-gravitational force up from Ganymede's bleak surface. 

So it was done. Eileen 

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