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to the smelter where he worked, or to world management because no report was required. The murderer was left free to drift from job to job. Now he has gone prospecting and may be difficult to find. This represents a flagrant violation of the Inter-World Federation's constitution—failing to protect the lives of your citizens by providing no mechanism for taking action against a murderer. I'm going to recommend that your world's status be changed immediately from 'Unnullified' to 'Nullified.' I'll get a spacegram off today. As the law requires, I am giving you written notice of that fact so you can prepare your defense. There will be a hearing, of course."
    Pummery glanced at the paper Dantler handed to him and then handed it back. There was a faint smile on his face. "I suggest that you hold off with your report—and with your notification—until you have completed your investigation. You haven't visited the Shangri-la mine, yet. Surely your investigation will be incomplete without evidence from the last place Lefory is known to have worked."
    Dantler studied him warily. He scented a trap. After a moment's thought, he said, "Certainly, if you prefer it. It probably won't delay things more than a day."
    * * *
    The Shangri-la was just as promising a mine as the Laughingstock, its manager—one Pierre Somler—told Dantler, but it was still in an early stage of development. Thus far its profits had been invested in machinery; the dwellings were shacks, and so was the office.
    The manager vividly remembered Lefory. "The record said he was lazy. He was spectacularly lazy. On my visits to the diggings, I rarely found him working. He was always taking a break."
    "But you kept him on because of the labor shortage," Dantler said wearily.
    Somler nodded. "That, and because we always hope that a poor employee will change his habits. Usually that happens when dividends are paid and everyone else receives a tidy bonus. A poor employee's long list of demerits results in his receiving nothing. He immediately decides to be at the top of the list when the next dividends are declared. But it didn't happen that way with Lefory. Shiftless he was; shiftless he remained.
    "Then there were his complaints about his fellow workers. He kept saying they were trying to 'get' him. He had the darndest accidents, some of them almost unbelievable. He wanted to be a heavy machine operator, but on his first try, a freak short circuit nearly electrocuted him. After that he wouldn't go near one of the machines. The head flew off a fellow worker's pickax and put him in the hospital for a few days. If it'd hit him in the head instead of the back, it would have killed him. That sort of thing. Finally he vanished."
    "Was it a planned disappearance? I mean—did he accumulate supplies for a stay in the wilderness and take prospecting equipment with him?"
    "I think he did. He had mentioned to one of the workers that he was going back to Pummery the next morning and leave Llayless on the first ship out. He thought this was an unlucky world for him, and he could do better starting fresh somewhere else. But that night someone broke into the commissary and took the sort of supplies a prospector would want, and a worker saw Lefory sneaking away on a mountain path with a pack on his back."
    "Is there any other evidence that he is out there in the wilderness?"
    "No. But it's the ideal place for him. No fellow workers he has to get along with, he can work whatever hours he sets for himself, and take a day off when he wants to. All he has to do is figure out how to eat regularly."
    "And all I have to do," Dantler said, "is figure out how to catch him. A world without a government, and without any police force, is a poor place for a manhunt."
    * * *
    Jeffrey Wallingford Pummery said with interest, "Do you mean you've abandoned your search?"
    "Right. Lefory is bound to show up sometime. I'll leave a warrant for him. You'll have to apprehend him the moment he