and the future looked interesting, if not cheerful. He went to sleep easily for the first time since the meeting with Norma on Ganymede. He dreamed a pleasant dream of freedom and success that ended with the bark of a pistol.

Shocked out of his sleep, he lay stunned and blinking for a moment, and then leaped out of bed and raced to the corridor. The light blinded him first, but not enough to stop him from seeing Cahill.

Cahill came along the tiny corridor listlessly, blood dribbling from under his left arm, running down his fingers and splashing on the floor. On Cahill's face was a stunned expression, full of incomprehension, semi-blank. Blood ran down his leg, across his ankle and left red footprints on the floor.

Through the haze that clouded Cahill's eyes, he saw Farradyne. He stumbled forward and reached out, but collapsed like a limp towel, to stretch out at Farradyne's feet like a tired baby. His voice sighed out in a dying moan that sounded like a rundown phonograph ... and then the shocking rattle of death.

Steps behind him came Norma Hannon. Her eyes were blazing with an unholy satisfied light and her body was alive and sinuous. A tiny automatic dangled from her right hand. Her lips curled in a sneer as she came up to Cahill and poked at the dead man's hand with her bare foot.

"He—" she started to cry in a strident tone. Then the semi-hysteria faded and she looked down at Cahill again, relishing the idea.

Farradyne shuddered. Cahill probably had not been able to do more than clutch at the deep neckline of Norma's nightgown.

He leaned back against the wall and saw things in a sort of horrid slow motion. Under any normal circumstances, no jury in the solar system would have listened to an attempt to prosecute her. Under any normal circumstances, Farradyne could bury Cahill at space and report the incident at the first landing. But Farradyne couldn't stand too much investigation. Norma Hannon was a hellflower addict, a "blank," in Cahill's words; she couldn't bear investigation.

Worst of all was the loss of Cahill.

"Why?" asked Farradyne, bitterly.

"He—" Her eyes opened wide again as she relived the scene, relished the violence.

"Have your fun," gritted Farradyne.

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