The handcuffs fell from the “prisoner’s” wrists; he jerked a neutron-disruption blaster from under his jacket.  Vall, his needler already drawn, rayed the fellow dead before he could aim it, then saw that the two pseudo-policemen had drawn their needlers and were aiming in the direction of Salgath Trod.  There were no flashes or reports; only the spot of light that had winked on and off under Vall’s rear sight had told him that his weapon had been activated.  He saw it appear again as the sights centered on one of the “policemen.”  Then he saw the other imposter’s needler aimed at himself.  That was the last thing he expected ever to see, in that life; he tried to shift his own weapon, and time seemed frozen, with his arm barely moving.  Then there was a white blur as Dalla’s cloak moved in front of him, and the needler dropped from the fingers of the disguised murderer.  Time went back to normal for him; he safetied his own weapon and dropped it, jumping forward.

He grabbed the fellow in the green uniform by the nose with his left hand, and punched him hard in the pit of the stomach with his right fist.  The man’s mouth flew open, and a green capsule, the size and shape of a small bean, flew out.  Pushing Dalla aside before she would step on it, he kicked the murderer in the stomach, doubling him over, and chopped him on the base of the skull with the edge of his hand.  The pseudo-policeman dropped senseless.

With a handful of handkerchief-tissue from his pocket, he picked up the disgorged capsule, wrapping it carefully after making sure that it was unbroken.  Then he looked around.  The other two assassins were dead.  Tortha Karf, who had been looking at the man in Proletarian dress whom Vall had killed first, turned, looked in another direction, and then cursed.  Vall followed his eyes, and cursed also.  One of the two policemen who had gotten out of the aircar was dead, too, and so was the all-important witness, Salgath Trod—­as dead as Nebu-hin-Abenoz, a hundred thousand parayears away.

* * * * *

The whole thing had ended within thirty seconds; for about half as long, everybody waited, poised in a sort of action-vacuum, for something else to happen.  Dalla had dropped the shoulder-bag with which she had clubbed the prisoner’s needler out of his hand, and caught up the fallen weapon.  When she saw that the man was down and motionless, she laid it aside and began picking up the glittering or silken trifles that had spilled from the burst bag.  Vall retrieved his own weapon, glanced over it, and holstered it.  Sothran Barth, the lieutenant in charge of the landing stage, was bawling orders, and men were coming out of the ready-room and piling into vehicles to pursue the aircar which had brought the assassins.

“Barth!” Vall called.  “Have you a hypodermic and a sleep-drug ampoule?  Well, give this boy a shot; he’s only impact-stunned.  Be careful of him; he’s important.”  He glanced around the landing-stage.  “Fact is, he’s all we have to show for this business.”