Part 2

Jedon Onomondo leaned forward earnestly. "Listen, Mr. Cameron; I'll admit that we Damakoi are--well, as you Earthmen say, fanatic. We know what we believe in, and we fight for it. If that's stupid, well, it's stupid. But that's the way we are."

He stopped and took a deep breath.

"I believe in the cause of the Galactic Government. I know that very few of my people do, but I do.

"Now, I don't think we have the right to take a chance. Either the man you're holding now is an anti-Government man or he isn't. If he isn't, I'll be glad to apologize or fight him to the death, whichever you or he prefer.

"But, I repeat, we can't take any chance. We've got to know.

"So, let me take a look at him. If he _is_ Zorvash Pedrik, you can hold him and find out the truth. If he isn't, we can check on his story and find out where Zorvash Pedrik is."

I rubbed my chin, as though I were thinking my decision over, although I had already made up my mind. After a minute, I looked up at him and said: "In other words, you won't know whether this man is Zorvash Pedrik or not unless you see him?"

The Damakoi spread his hands. "How could I?"

I stood up. "Okay, Jedon Onomondo. Let's go. I'll get him out of the Grand Capitol, and we'll take a look at him."

"Fair enough," said the Damakoi. "Let's go."

* * * * *

By the time we got back to the Grand Capitol, things had happened. My assistant, Ned, was waiting for me by the main gate. When my car pulled up, he leaped aboard.

"Chief, something's happened. Nothing really serious, except that that Damakoi that you left here has been hit by a high-frequency guard beam."

"How did that happen?"

Ned shrugged. "One of the guards let him walk around. Somehow, he managed to get hit by a beam. We can't figure out how; none of the ways to the guard beams are open. A freakish occurrence.

"Holdreth Khain doesn't know what happened. Evidently, he dragged himself from where he was hit. We have him in the Special Room now."

I got out of the car.

"All's well so far," I told him. "We don't need to worry about the slight burns from a guard beam. They're hard ultra-violet. They won't even touch an Earthman, except after long exposure, and they won't disable a Damakoi very long."

"This is worse than that," Ned said. "His leg is pretty badly blistered, and he's unconscious. The doctor says they're definitely guard beam burns, all right, so we don't have to worry about hard radiation." He spread his hands. "The thing is, the doctor says we can't move him."

I think I must have stood there for a full thirty seconds, saying nothing. The last little piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Jedon Onomondo looked puzzled. "What is a guard beam?"

"It's a high-frequency ultra-violet ray," I told him. "It's projected across a hall or door. If anyone crosses it, an alarm rings. But in the section where we are keeping Holdreth Khain, they were all supposed to be shut off because you Damakoi are so sensitive to radiation." I turned to Ned again. "It looks as though there's not much else we can do except take Jedon Onomondo into the Grand Capitol to identify Holdreth Khain. We've got to see whether he's our killer or not."

"All right," Ned agreed. He turned to the Damakoi. "You'll have to come with me. We can't allow you down there without a complete examination."

The Damakoi went along complacently, while I went down below, into the lower level of the Capitol to see what had happened to Holdreth Khain.

* * * * *

He was lying on a couch in one of the big reception rooms, his eyes closed, and breathing heavily. His leg was bandaged, but I knew that underneath it, the skin was a mass of blisters that looked like a bad case of sunburn.

There was a doctor standing nearby, but he looked rather helpless.

"What's the matter, Doctor?" I asked.

He frowned. "The trouble is that I don't know very much about the alien body chemistry of the Damakoi. I'm as helpless as anyone else. He's in pretty bad shape--I think."

I leaned over the supine Damakoi.

"Holdreth Khain, can you hear me?"

His eyes opened, and he blinked a couple of times. Then he looked directly at me. "I can hear you. But my--my leg hurts." He smiled feebly. "Damn you Terrans and your hellish alarm systems."

He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was more than a trace of bitterness in his voice.

"Holdreth Khain," I said, "I'm bringing in a man to see you--one of your fellow Damakoi. We've got a sneaking hunch that he may be Zorvash Pedrik. Do you think you're up to identifying him?"

He seemed to grow a little stronger almost immediately.

"Certainly," he said. "Bring him in."

"Will you be all right, do you think?" I asked. "The doctor has to attend to another patient."

It was an out-and-out lie, but I wanted to get the doctor out of the room. The physician started to say something in protest, but I silenced him with a glance.

"I'll be all right," said Holdreth Khain.

The doctor took the hint and got out.

I pointed at a door across the room. "I'm going to bring the man in through that door. I want you to take a good look at him--the way he walks, the way he acts--notice everything about him. I want to be absolutely sure of our identification."

"Very well," said the Damakoi. "I'll watch him carefully. If it's Zorvash Pedrik, I'll know him."

"Good. I'll get him now." I went for the alien.

* * * * *

Jedon Onomondo had been searched thoroughly, and his clothing had been completely changed. He was wiping the dampness of perspiration from his blue, four-fingered hands with a handkerchief when I walked in.

"How is he, Mr. Cameron?" he asked.

"He'll be all right for a while," I told him. "Are you ready to take a look at him?"

"Any time."

"Come along, then."

I led him down the corridor to a drop tube, and we went down to the door of the room where Holdreth Khain lay on a couch with two guards watching him. They had their instructions.

"He's in there," I told the Damakoi. I gestured at the door. "Now, don't get violent when you see him--if he's the man we want. I know you Damakoi are likely to lose your temper at the sight of an enemy, but we've got guards in there to stop you."

Jedon Onomondo's blue skin seemed to pale a little, but he said nothing. He nodded in agreement.

I opened the door. The Damakoi went in first, and I followed him, staying well behind.

Within a few seconds, I'd know whether my reasoning had been right.

Jedon Onomondo walked across the room. It was a long room, nearly forty feet from end to end. I stayed well behind, letting the Damakoi do as he pleased.

When he was about half-way across the room, he started to run.

Holdreth Khain had been watching the approach of the other Damakoi, and, at the same instant he started to run, Holdreth Khain leaped out of the couch and ran toward Jedon Onomondo.

When they were still ten feet apart, they slammed solidly into the pair of invisible plexisteel walls I had had set up across the room.

They both screamed in hatred, and tried to batter down the walls. Then they realized what they had done to themselves and stopped.

I wasn't quite prepared for the Damakoi on my side of the wall. Jedon Onomondo turned, mouthing an oath in Damakese, and jumped at me.

I didn't avoid it in time, and we went down, rolling over and over on the floor. His arm went around my throat, squeezing off my air.

I managed to get a finger on the Damakoi's hand. I grabbed and twisted, and the arm came from around my throat.

* * * * *

He turned a little, and landed a solid left to my temple which filled the room with bursting stars. I shook my head to clear it and fended off another blow with my arm.

His guard was down, and I saw my chance. My left drove into the pit of his stomach, and he doubled up, all the breath knocked out of him.

Then my right fist came up from somewhere around my knees and slammed into his jaw. The hard uppercut lifted him off his feet and slammed him back against the invisible wall.

He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

_Good old one-two_, I thought as I rubbed my knuckles.

* * * * *

The guards on the other side of the wall had finally managed to hold down Holdreth Khain. Ned Dearborn burst through the door behind me.

"You okay, Chief?"

"I'm all right," I told him, "but I think we have a couple of dying Damakoi on our hands."

Ned walked over and looked at the Damakoi I had just slugged. "How did they figure they'd get away with it?" he asked.

"Actually, it was a pretty good scheme," I told him. "They knew they couldn't get one man in here with a theta bomb; they'd never get past the guards and the detectors.

"So they planted a couple of spheres of ditherium in _two_ men--a negative sphere in one and a positive sphere in the other. All they had to do was stand close to each other, and the bomb would go off."

"What was it that tipped you off?" Ned asked.

"Several things. That phony note at the Hotel Granada, for instance. It was a plant to prove to me that there really was such a person as 'Zorvash Pedrik'--which there isn't, of course.

"In order to find the phony note, they had to give us a clue as to where it was. So they used a harmless neutrino generator, which would be spotted by our detectors.

"But a _real_ assassin who actually knew that Holdreth Khain was working with us would have used something less harmless. Why an expensive neutrino generator, when some cheap radioactive would do? _Because he didn't want to kill Holdreth Khain!_

"And that meant that our friendly Damakoi was a phony."

Ned shook his head. "What a screwy idea. Get two men in instead of one."

"Exactly," I said.

"But if they maneuvered it so that one of the Damakoi could get himself in my good graces and get himself into the building--our detectors couldn't pick up just _one_ sphere of ditherium, of course--and then put him in a position where the other half of the bomb would have to be brought to him as a logical part of the investigation--"

* * * * *

"Then that's why Holdreth Khain burned himself!" Ned expostulated.

"Sure. He knew where those guard beams were. He burned himself so that we couldn't move him. That forced us to bring Jedon Onomondo to him."

Ned put his hand on the invisible wall. "We had to let them go through with it, just to see what happened. When they hit these walls, they were exactly ten feet apart."

I looked at the fallen Damakoi. "At that distance," I said, "the two spheres put out just enough radiation to kill the Damakoi without hurting us. I'm afraid they don't have much time left."

THE END