* * * * *

A real civil war was developing even as Klarnood spoke; by mid-morning
of the next day, the fighting that had been partially suppressed by
the Constabulary had broken out anew. The Assassins employed by the
Solar Hotel--heavily re-enforced during the night--had fought a
pitched battle with Statisticalist partisans on the landing-stage
above Verkan Vall's suite, and now several Constabulary airboats were
patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference
seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to
shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to
endanger nonparticipants was taboo.

Just how successful in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was
open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the
crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other
parts of the towering city-unit. There hadn't been a civil war on the
Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron
Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier
extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year.
If anything, he was surprised that the explosion had taken so long to
occur.

One of the servants furnished to him by the hotel management
approached him in the drawing room, holding a four-inch-square wafer
of white plastic.

"Lord Virzal, there is a masked Assassin in the hallway who brought
this under Assassins' Truce," he said.