But his flinching left Ylana's mouth clear for an instant. She screamed, shrill and piercing.
Jarl cursed. He tried to throw her aside.
But she clutched his belt, clinging. Snatching his razor-edged knife from its sheath, she slashed at him.
He rocked backward, off balance.
The girl twisted. He glimpsed her face—teeth bared, features strain-straut. Back-handed, she lashed at his temple with the knife-haft, her full strength behind it.
It struck home as the first guards burst through the doorway....
CHAPTER II
Twin blue-and-silver Federation banners marked the place of the high commissioner of all the asteroids.
His table stood at the far end of the vast room that had been Ktar Wassreck's workshop. Other tables radiated out in a great arc from it—tables crowded with officers of the Federation fleet. Heavy-thewed Uranian daus sat side by side with slim reptilian Pervods. Transmi of Venus, all ear-stalks and sucking tubes, faced rubbery, flat-featured Europans. Creatures of half-a-hundred divergent races, hybrids and mutants, they gathered here from all the far-flung planets of the Federation. Their rising voices clashed in strange cacophony through the tinkle of cutlery and crystal, thrown back in a din of ringing echoes from the giant metal robots that still lined the walls.