Then, some morning, a couple of deputy marshals would take Leonard Kellogg out in the jail yard and put a bullet through the back of his head, which, in itself, would be no loss.  The trouble was, they would also be shooting an irreparable hole in the Zarathustra Company’s charter.  Maybe Kellogg could be kept out of court, at that.  There wasn’t a ship blasted off from Darius without a couple of drunken spacemen being hustled aboard at the last moment; with the job Holloway must have done, Kellogg should look just right as a drunken spaceman.  The twenty-five thousand sols’ bond could be written off; that was pennies to the Company.  No, that would still leave them stuck with the Holloway trial.

“You want me out of here when the others come, Victor?” Emmert asked, popping another canape into his mouth.

“No, no; sit still.  This will be the last chance we’ll have to get everybody together; after this, we’ll have to avoid anything that’ll look like collusion.”

“Well, anything I can do to help; you know that, Victor,” Emmert said.

Yes, he knew that.  If worst came to utter worst and the Company charter were invalidated, he could still hang on here, doing what he could to salvage something out of the wreckage—­if not for the Company, then for Victor Grego.  But if Zarathustra were reclassified, Nick would be finished.  His title, his social position, his sinecure, his grafts and perquisites, his alias-shrouded Company expense account—­all out the airlock.  Nick would be counted upon to do anything he could—­however much that would be.

He looked across the room at the levitated globe, revolving imperceptibly in the orange spotlight.  It was full dark on Beta Continent now, where Leonard Kellogg had killed a Fuzzy named Goldilocks and Jack Holloway had killed a gunman named Kurt Borch.  That angered him, too; hell of a gunman!  Clear shot at the broad of a man’s back, and still got himself killed.  Borch hadn’t been any better choice than Kellogg himself.  What was the matter with him; couldn’t he pick men for jobs any more?  And Ham O’Brien!  No, he didn’t have to blame himself for O’Brien.  O’Brien was one of Nick Emmert’s boys.  And he hadn’t picked Nick, either.

The squawk-box on the desk made a premonitory noise, and a feminine voice advised him that Mr. Coombes and his party had arrived.

“All right; show them in.”

Coombes entered first, tall suavely elegant, with a calm, untroubled face.  Leslie Coombes would wear the same serene expression in the midst of a bombardment or an earthquake.  He had chosen Coombes for chief attorney, and thinking of that made him feel better.  Mohammed Ali O’Brien was neither tall, elegant nor calm.  His skin was almost black—­he’d been born on Agni, under a hot B3 sun.  His bald head glistened, and a big nose peeped over the ambuscade of a bushy white mustache.  What was it they said about him?  Only man on Zarathustra who could strut sitting down.  And behind them, the remnant of the expedition to Beta Continent—­Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris.  Mallin was saying that it was a pity Dr. Kellogg wasn’t with them.