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sections were loud in the accusation that the criminals must have corrupted that district’s watch to operate so freely. The Guard denied the charge, pleading that they were sadly undermanned.
    Fallon’s squad had turned off Barfur Street, and was heading along a stinking alley that zigzagged toward the district boundary, when a noise ahead made Fallon freeze in his tracks, then motion his squad forward with caution. Peering around a corner he saw a citizen backed against a wall by three characters. One covered the victim with a crossbow-pistol; another menaced him with a sword, and a third relieved him of purse and rings. The hold-up had evidently just started.
    This was a rare chance. Ordinarily, a squad of the Guard arrived on the spot to find only the victim—either dead on the cobbles, or alive and yammering about the city’s lawlessness.
    Knowing that if he rushed directly at the criminals, they would duck into houses and alleys before he could reach them, Fallon whispered to Cisasa: “Circle around this little block on our right and take them from the other side. Just come on at full speed. When we see you, we’ll jump them from here.”
    Cisasa faded away like a shadow. Fallon heard the slight click of the Osirian’s claws on the cobbles as the dinosaurian guard went like the wind. Cisasa, Fallon knew, could outrun two normal Earthmen or Krishnans; otherwise he would not have sent him. The hold-up would have been over by the time a man could have circumambulated the block.
    The click-click of claws came again, louder, and Cisasa burst into view around a bend, heading for the miscreants with Jabberwockian strides. “Come on,” said Fallon.
    At the scud of feet, the robbers whirled. Fallon heard the snap of the pistol’s bowstring, but in the dimness he could not tell who had been shot at. There was no indication that the bolt had struck anybody.
    The robbers leaped for cover. Cisasa gave an enormous bound and came down with his birdlike feet on the back of the cross-bowman, hurling him prone to the ground.
    The tall, thin robber with the sword, in a moment of confusion, ran toward Fallon, then skidded to a halt. Fallon thrust at the fellow with his bill, heard the clank of steel, and felt the jar down the shaft as the robber parried. Fallon’s two Krishnans ran past-him after the fellow who had been frisking the victim, and who had bolted past Cisasa toward an alley.
    Fallon thrust and parried with his bill, pressing forward, but watching warily, lest his antagonist catch his billshaft with his free hand and then close in. By a fluke, he got a jab home on the fellow’s swordarm. The sword clattered to the pavement and the man turned to run. Seeing that he would have little chance of catching this lanky scoundrel in a chase, Fallon hurled his bill javelinwise. The point of the weapon struck the fellow between the shoulders. The robber ran on a couple of steps with the bill sticking in his back, then faltered and fell.
    Fallon ran after him, drawing his own sword; but by the time he came up with the robber the latter was lying prone, coughing blood. The two Krishnans of the squad now reappeared from the alley into which they had chased the third thief, cursing the fellow for having given them the slip. They had recovered the citizen’s purse, which the robber had dropped, but not his rings, for which he loudly berated them for inefficiency.
     
    Roqir was rising redly over the roof-tops of Zanid when Anthony Fallon and his squad returned to the armory from their final round. They stacked their bills back in the rack and lined up to receive the nominal pay that the municipal prefect paid to members of the Guard for watch-duty.
    “The stint’s adjourned. Forget not Fiveday’s drill,” said Kordaq, handing out quarter kard silver pieces.
    “Something tells me,” murmured Fallon, “that a mysterious malady will lay our gallant company low the day before the drill.”
    “Qarar’s blood! It had better not!