came forward bowing and smiling.

"Larnorm, I want you to put five of your best Assassins to guarding
the approaches to the Lord Virzal's suite," Klarnood told him. "I'll
send five more from Assassins' Hall to replace them at their ordinary
duties. And I'll hold you responsible with your carnate existence for
the Lord Virzal's safety in this hotel. Understand?"

"Oh, yes, Honorable Assassin-President; you may trust me. The Lord
Virzal will be perfectly safe."

In Verkan Vall's suite, above, Klarnood sat down and got out his pipe,
filling it with tobacco lightly mixed with _zerfa_. To his surprise,
he saw his host light a plain tobacco cigarette.

"Don't you use _zerfa_?" he asked.

"Very little," Verkan Vall replied. "I grow it. If you'd see the bums
who hang around our drying sheds, on Venus, cadging rejected leaves
and smoking themselves into a stupor, you'd be frugal in using it,
too."

Klarnood nodded. "You know, most men would want a pipe of fifty
percent, or a straight _zerfa_ cigarette, after what you've been
through," he said.

"I'd need something like that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one
to deaden," Verkan Vall said. "As it is, I feel like a murderer of
babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a
cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn't handle a pistol at all. I