barroom. "The only kind of a rascal that could dump a spacer and kill thirty-three people and then turn up with another spacer is a big-time operator. You louse!" she screamed at him. Then she turned to the rest of the room, calling:

"Fellows, meet Charles Farradyne, the big-time hellflower operator!"

Farradyne's nerves leaped. He knew his spacemen. A louse they could ignore, but a dope runner--

Their faces changed from deliberate dis-recognition of him to cold and calculated hatred, not so much of Farradyne as of what he represented in their minds. Farradyne knew that he had better get out of here quickly or he would leave most of his skin on the floor.Something touched him on the shoulder, hard. He snapped his head around. The bartender had rapped him on the shoulder with the muzzle of a double-barrelled shotgun.

"Get the hell out of here," said the man from between narrowed lips. "And take your rotten money with you!"

He scooped up the change he had dropped beside Farradyne's glass and hurled the original bill at him. It went over the bar and landed in a spittoon between the brass rail and the bar.

"Pick it up," growled the barkeep coldly. He waved the shotgun and forced Farradyne to retrieve the soggy bill. "Now get out--quick!"

Then his voice rose above the growing murmur of angry men. "Sit down, dammit! Every bloody one of you sit the hell down. We ain't going to have no trouble in here!" He covered the room with the shotgun to hold them.

Farradyne left quickly. He burned inwardly, he wanted to have it out; but this was the game Clevis wanted him to play--it was the price of his freedom from the fungus fields. He took it on the run to his Lancaster, knowing that the barkeep would hold the room until escape was made.

He took the ship up as soon as the landing ramp was retracted and only then did his nerves calm down. He seemed to have started with a bang. If Clevis wanted a decoy, what better decoy than to make a noise like a small guy muscling in on a big racket?

The word would travel from bar to bar, from port to port until it reached the necessary person. Time was unimportant now. The word must get around. So instead of driving to some definite destination, Farradyne set the Lancaster in a long, lazy course and let the big ship loaf its way into space.

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