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had seen there, and then something whizzed past his head and exploded with a
soft plop behind him. Turning, he saw a pool of gray vapor beginning to spread
in the middle of the room. Dalla must have got a breath of it, for she was
slumped over the chair from which she had just risen.
Dropping the submachine-gun and gulping a lungful of fresh air from outside,
Verkan Vall rushed to her, caught her by the heels, and dragged her into
Prince Jirzyn's bedroom, beyond. Leaving her in the middle of the floor, he
took another deep breath and returned to the drawing room, where Sarnax was
already overcome by the sleep-gas.
He saw the serving table from which he had got the brandy, and dragged it over
to the bedroom door, overturning it and laying it across the doorway, its legs
in the air. Like most Akor-Neb serving tables, it had a gravity-counteraction
unit under it; he set this for double minus-gravitation and snapped it on. As
it was now above the inverted table, the table did not rise, but a tendril, of
sleep-gas, curling toward it, bent upward and drifted away from the doorway.
Satisfied that he had made a temporary barrier against the sleep-gas, Verkan
Vall secured Dalla's hunting pistol and spare magazines and lay down at the
bedroom door.
For some time, there was silence outside. Then the besiegers evidently decided
that the sleep-gas attack had been a success. An Assassin, wearing a gas mask
and carrying a submachine-gun, appeared in the doorway, and behind him came a
tall man in a tan tunic, similarly masked. They stepped into the room and
looked around.
Knowing that he would be shooting over a two hundred percent negative
gravitation-field, Verkan Vall aimed for the Assassin's belt-buckle and
squeezed. The bullet caught him in the throat. Evidently the bullet had
not only been lifted in the negative gravitation, but lifted point-first and
deflected upward. He held his front sight just above the other man's knee, and
hit him in the chest.
As he fired, he saw a wisp of gas come sliding around the edge of the inverted
table. There was silence outside, and for an instant, he was tempted to
abandon his post and go to the bathroom, back of the bedroom, for wet towels
to improvise a mask. Then, when he tried to crawl backward, he could not.
There was an impression of distant shouting which turned to a roaring sound in
his head. He tried to lift his pistol, but it slipped from his fingers.
When consciousness returned, he was lying on his back, and something cold and
rubbery was pressing into his face. He raised his arms to fight off whatever
it was, and opened his eyes, to find that he was staring directly at the red
oval and winged bullet of the Society of Assassins. A hand caught his wrist as
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he reached for the small pistol under his arm. The pressure on his face eased.
"It's all right, Lord Virzal," a voice came to him. "Assassins' Truce!"
He nodded stupidly and repeated the words. "Assassins' Truce; I won't shoot.
What happened?"
Then he sat up and looked around. Prince Jirzyn's bedchamber was full of
Assassins. Dalla, recovering from her touch of sleep-gas, was sitting groggily
in a chair, while five or six of them fussed around her, getting in each
others' way, handing her drinks, chaffing her wrists, holding damp cloths on
her brow.
That was standard procedure, when any group of males thought Dalla
needed any help. Another
Assassin, beside the bed, was putting away an oxygen-mask outfit, and the
Assassin who had prevented
Verkan Vall from drawing his pistol was his own follower, Marnik.
And Klarnood, the
Assassin-President, was sitting on the foot of the bed, smoking one of Prince
Jirzyn's monogrammed and crested cigarettes critically.
Verkan Vall looked at Marnik, and then at Klarnood, and back to Marnik.
"You got through," he said. "Good work, Marnik; I thought they'd downed you."
"They did; I had to crash-land in the woods. I went about a mile on foot, and
then I found a man and woman and two children, hiding in one of these little
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