your enemies, and you don't need luck! Ever play chess?"

"Nope, can't say I did. Played the horses on Mars, though, time we hoisted the Euphemeron. Won, too—after I bought my lucky ghost charm; been in the chips ever since!" Slim's grin widened, but his face remained stubbornly unconvinced.

Fleigh chuckled. If the planetoid outlaws depended on magic, while the Council visionaries spouted sentimental twaddle, so much the better for the realists. "Charms don't work in politics, Slim. We have to anticipate resistance. And you saw what happened to our fine Martian Councilor Curtis when he decided to expose us and ruin the Mandate!"

"Yeah." Slim's yellow teeth chewed thoughtfully on his cud. "S'pose he'd stood on Mars, though?"

"We'd have dropped hints of just the information he needed on Ceres and trapped him there—as we did. Checkmate!"

"Or check-out! So when he don't come back, they smell a rat—an' I ain't planning on being around to chew rat-poison. My grandpappy killed a Councilor once—poor grandpappy!... Hey, there's the rock!"

There was no outward sign of life on the barren little planetoid. But as the ship came to a grinding stop in a narrow gorge, a concealing shield snapped over them, and a crudely painted sign blazed out in phosphorescent gaudiness on one rocky wall: SIMILACRA, LTD. Jeremiah Greek, Prop. Specialist.

Fleigh came out of the lock first and paused while he waited for Slim to shoulder the tarpaulin-covered Curtis and follow. He grinned and pointed at the Greek characters in the sign. "Magician and wonder-worker; specialist in imitation and mockery," he translated. "I looked it up on Mars, so don't go thinking it's some kind of spell.... Now if the old fool will open up...."

Max remembered his own preconceptions of Greek's process, pictured various impressive-looking apparatus, which included a large tube through which some sort of lightning zig-zagged, and a beautiful woman taking form from a stream of transmuted elements streaming from the top. It was nothing like such cinematic legerdemain, of course.

"Why ain't English good enough for him?" complained Slim. "I don't go for that magic stuff, Max. We been...."

But the Sigma was already swinging back on its tips to reveal a passage through the rock. A little, shriveled man in tattered shorts and thick-lensed glasses 

 Prev. P 2/16 next