"Your own words convict you, not I."
Suddenly the pirate renegade thrust back his gun and flung back his grizzled head in a splutter of laughter. "What odds, Thorne? This ship goes into the sun and they with it."
"But we're not going into the sun," said Thorne.
"And who's to stop me?" demanded Wheelwright, laughing still.
"Myself," said Thorne, abruptly coming to his feet with a tigerish surge, the barrel of his gun leaping from the holster on which his hand had been resting, the lethal volt-ball at its muzzle square between Wheelwright's startled eyes.
Jaw agape, the General could only stare and stare, his hands lax at his side, and Thorne went softly on.
"You spun your webs too fine, Lucas. I told you, as I told Bannerman, I was cured of the t'ang habit. He believed. You refused to believe. Now you pay for it."
"You ... you weren't paralyzed at all?" stammered Wheelwright, sheer unbelief still apparent in his eyes.
"My t'ang-soaked body did not absorb the catalystic salts Iris fed us," smiled Thorne, bleakly. "If I can no longer drink, neither can I be poisoned. Your cat's paw and his ray meant nothing to me." His voice tightened. "Enough, renegade! Your gunbelt! Unbuckle it. Drop it."
Slowly the General unfastened the broad gold buckle of his rich belt, his head bowed. Then, as he released it, he suddenly thrust up his left arm to free his black cloak, jerked the belt forward smartly, and clipped Thorne across the wrist with the buckle. The belt, weighted down by the heavy gun, was torn from his grasp, but it had at least knocked the Blandarc from Thorne's hand as well.