From the play-back over their heads another voice blared, breaking across his last words: 

“Surrender!  This is the Patrol.  Surrender or take the consequences!” And that faint sighing which signaled their open contact with the outer world was cut off.  The Com-tech turned away from the control board, a sneering half smile on his face.

“They’ve reached the circuit and cut you off.  You’re done!”

Dane stared into the cage where the now almost invisible thing sat humped together.  He had done his best—­they had all done their best.  He felt nothing but a vast fatigue, an overwhelming weariness, not so much of body, but of nerve and spirit too.

Rip broke the silence with a question aimed at the tech.  “Can you signal below?”

“Going to give up?” The fellow brightened.  “Yes, there’s an inter-com I can cut in.”

Rip stood up.  He unbuckled the belt about his waist and laid it on the table—­disarming himself.  Without words Ali and Dane followed his example.  They had played their hand—­to prolong the struggle would mean nothing.  The acting Captain of the Queen gave a last order: 

“Tell them we are coming down unarmed—­to surrender.”  He paused in front of Hovan.  “You’d better stay here.  If there’s any trouble—­no reason for you to be caught in the middle.”

Hovan nodded as the three left the room.  Dane, remembering the trick he had pulled with the riser, made a comment: 

“We may be marooned here—­”

Ali shrugged.  “Then we can just wait and let them collect us.”  He yawned, his dark eyes set in smudges.  “I don’t care if they’ll just let us sleep the clock around afterwards.  D’you really think,” he addressed Rip, “that we’ve done ourselves any good?”

Rip neither denied nor confirmed.  “We took our only chance.  Now it’s up to them—­” He pointed to the wall and the teeming world which lay beyond it.

Ali grinned wryly.  “I note you left the what-you-call-it with Hovan.”

“He wanted one to experiment with,” Dane replied.  “I thought he’d earned it.”

“And now here comes what we’ve earned—­” Rip cut in as the hum of the riser came to their ears.

“Should we take to cover?” Ali’s mobile eyebrows underlined his demand.  “The forces of law and order may erupt with blasters blazing.”

But Rip did not move.  He faced the riser door squarely and, drawn by something in that stance of his, the other two stepped in on either side so that they fronted the dubious future as a united group.  Whatever came now, the Queen’s men would meet it together.

In a way Ali was right.  The four men who emerged all had their blasters or riot stun-rifles at ready, and the sights of those weapons were trained at the middles of the Free Traders.  As Dane’s empty hands, palm out, went up on a line with his shoulders, he estimated the opposition.  Two were in the silver and black of the Patrol, two wore the forest green of the Terrapolice.  But they all looked like men with whom it was better not to play games.