"I'll agree to anything," said Stan Buckley fiercely, "that will get my hands about your throat!"

Rob Torren shrugged.

"I've turned off the guard photocells," he said calmly. "I've a key for your cell. I'm going to let you out. I can't afford to kill you except under the conditions I named, or I'll have no chance to win Esther. If you kill me under any other conditions, you'll simply be beamed as a murderer." He paused, and then added, "And I have to come and fight you because a letter from you admitting that I've behaved honorably is the only possible thing that would satisfy Esther. You give your word to wait until you've escaped and I come for you before you try to kill me?"

Stan Buckley hesitated a long, long time. Then he said in a thick voice, "I give my word."

Without hesitation, Rob Torren put a key in the cell door and turned it. He stood aside. Stan Buckley walked out, his hands clenched. Torren closed the door and re-locked it. He turned his back and walked down the corridor. He opened the door at its end. Again he stood aside. Stan Buckley went through. Torren closed the door, took a bit of cloth from his pocket, wiped off the key, hung it up again on a tiny hook, with the same bit of cloth threw a switch, and put the cloth back in his pocket.

"The photocells are back on," he said in a dry voice. "They say you're still in your cell. When the guard contradicts them, you'll seem to have vanished into thin air."

"I'm doing this," said Stan hoarsely, "to get a chance to kill you. Of course I've no real chance to escape!"

That was obvious. The Stallifer was deep in the void of interstellar space. She traveled at twelve hundred times the speed of light. Escape from the ship was impossible. And concealment past discovery when the ship docked was preposterous.

"That remains to be seen," said Torren coldly. "Come this way."

Torren went down a hallway. He slipped into a narrow doorway, unnoticeable unless one was looking for it. Stan followed. He found himself in that narrow, compartmented space between the ship's inner and outer skins. A door; another compartment; another door. Then a tiny air-lock—used for the egress of a single man to inspect or repair such exterior apparatus as the scanners for the ship's vision screens. There was a heap of assorted apparatus beside the air-lock door.

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