"Are you sure?" the chairman said, louder than he had intended. Everyone jumped. Almost everyone.

Madong nodded in a positive fashion.

The chairman rapped with his gavel. "We will take a recess," he said. "Fifteen minutes." He turned and whispered to two khaki-clad Terran guards.

The delegates sprang up willingly, milled about, chattering among themselves as they left the conference area.

Arising was quite a problem for Dr. Gor Jeetl. He had no arm-rests on his chair, you will recall, on which to brace his hands. Nevertheless, he was sure that he could make it. He turned sidewise on his inadequate seat, placed one hand on the back of his chair and made a heroic effort. Nothing happened. A heavy weight on each shoulder was holding him down.

Two white-gloved clad hands. He looked up with some surprise into the faces of the two guards.

There was not the slightest trace of compassion there. Two gendarmes sans merci.

The Captain of the Friendship Tower Guards was a fearless, red-faced man. Captains of the Guard are always red-faced and fearless. He spitted the Assistant Commissioner of Foreign Relations of Saturn with his gimlet eye, an impressive man who knew the overwhelming weight of his own personality.

The gallery was silent. The people knew that something extraordinary was going on, so they quelled the normal impulse to discuss it in order to satisfy that strongest of human yearnings. If they were quiet there was a bare possibility that they might hear something. The Word was not yet in the air. When it came they would change from rational beings into a huge, slavering beast—a mob. But the time was not yet; the beast lay hidden.

Gor Jeetl appeared mildly curious as to the reason for this sudden surplus of attention with which he was being deluged.

"Why am I held, Captain?" he asked. "It seems most inhospitable, to say the least. Think what this may do to the relations between our worlds, yours and my native Saturn."

"We have already thought of that," the Captain said.

"You have?" said Dr. Jeetl, surprised.

"Come, come," the Captain said. "The game's up. We know all about you, Fatty. One of the Venusian party heard the ticking."

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