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lifetime's training in blind obedience. However, the crew was a little less efficient than usual. They kept stealing looks.
    As a teardrop-shaped boat trundled forth, Dyann held most of her attention on the door through which she had entered. Pursuit might reopen it at any instant. Surely by now Roshevsky-Feldkamp and the soldiers had been found. It shouldn't take somebody long to think of the possibility that her group had fled hither.
    "I'll start the warmup, sir," the head mechanic said.
    "No, don't bother, ve'll take her straight out," Dyann replied.
    Aghast, he protested, "Madame, you don't understand. That'll cause carbon deposits in the tubes. You'll risk engine failure, a crash—"
    "You find that an acceptable risk," Dyann told the secret policeman.
    "Yes, of course I do," he choked. "The .. . the Leader tells us no hazard is too great for the cause."
    Dyann propelled him ahead of her through the airlock. In the control cabin, she pushed him into the pilot's recoil chair, which she recognized from her travels around Earth. "I hope you can fly vun of these," she said.
    "I hope so too," added Urushkidan. He slithered off the Jovian, secured the airlock, and knitted himself to a passenger seat.
    "Ve are goin to find Ray Tallantyre," Dyann instructed the man. Part of her thought that she was beginning to sound obsessive. Yet, given the witch's brew of events in which she had somehow submerged herself, it was as reasonable a plan of action as any. Ray's shrewdness and sophistication might lend her the vital extra help, when Ormun was being left behind. In fact, this appeared to have been Ormun's intention.
    "What do you mean?" the officer asked. He seemed a trifle disconcerted and confused.
    "Ray Tallantyre, the Earthman that vas arrested off the Yovian Qveen " Dyann said with what she congratulated herself was exemplary patience. "You in your service ought to know vere he is kept. Vould some blows refresh your memory?"
    "Camp Muellenhoff, you savage!" he got out. "North of the city. You'll never succeed. You'll kill us all."
    Dyann smiled. "Then ve vill feast forever vith the gods, in the Hall of Skulls," she comforted him. "Von't that be nice?"
    The cradle got into motion, rumbling toward the hangar airlock. Up a long ramp . . . into the chamber . . . darkness outside, as valves closed . . . hollow noise of pumps, withdrawing air. . . . Urushkidan relit his pipe with shaky tendrils. Dyann whistled tunelessly between her teeth.
    "I am not so sure we are wise," the Martian said. "Tis bessel cannot carry us away from te Jobian System, or eben to anoter satellite of te planet."
    "No, you are not wise," the political officer agreed eagerly.
    "Hindsight vill show," Dyann responded. "Meanvile, you vould be most unvise not to pilot like I tell you."
    The outer valve opened. The cradle rolled out onto the field. Behind that flat expanse, the dome which covered Wotanopolis glowed against sawtoothed mountains, rearing above a near horizon, and starlit sky. The dwarfed pale sun cast luminance from the west. Only one other spacecraft was in sight, a black shape which Dyann could identify as a patrol ship.
    "They vill come out after us in force pretty soon," she said. "Vat can ve do about that boat yonder, ha?" She reached a decision. "Ah, yes." Her involuntary pilot received his orders. When he clamored refusal, she reminded him, briefly but painfully, that he was no volunteer but, indeed, an impressed man. The engine thuttered and the little scientific craft rose.
    Having reached altitude, she descended again, sufficiently to play her jets across the patrol ship. That was not good for the patrol ship.
    Dyann didn't bother to receive whatever they were trying to tell her from the control tower. "Now," she stated as her boat rose anew, "you, my policeman friend, take us to this prison and make them release Tallantyre to us. If this goes okay, ve vill set you free somevere. If not—" she passed the edge of her knife across the back of