General Tallis eyed the Earthman for a long second. Then, without haste, he took the gun and inspected it with a professional eye.
"Do you know how to operate it?" MacMaine asked, forcing calmness into his voice.
"Yes. We've captured plenty of them." Tallis thumbed the stud that allowed the magazine to slide out of the butt and into his hand. Then he checked the mechanism and the power cartridges. Finally, he replaced the magazine and put the weapon into the empty sleeve holster that MacMaine had given him.
MacMaine let his breath out slowly. "All right," he said. "Let's go."
He opened the door of the cell, and both men stepped out into the corridor. At the far end of the corridor, some thirty yards away, stood the two armed guards who kept watch over the prisoner. At that distance, it was impossible to tell that Tallis was not what he appeared to be.
The guard had been changed while MacMaine was in the prisoner's cell, and he was relying on the lax discipline of the soldiers to get him and Tallis out of the cell block. With luck, the guards would have failed to listen too closely to what they had been told by the men they replaced; with even greater luck, the previous guardsmen would have failed to be too explicit about who was in the prisoner's cell. With no luck at all, MacMaine would be forced to shoot to kill.
MacMaine walked casually up to the two men, who came to an easy attention.
"I want you two men to come with me. Something odd has happened, and General Quinby and I want two witnesses as to what went on."
"What happened, sir?" one of them asked.