Snatching a knife from the lining of his cape, Wheelwright plunged forward with a snarl of triumph. He was all Chain Lucas now, all black-and-scarlet pirate.
But as he leaped, his own treachery rose up to avenge his victims upon himself. Thorne flashed out his heavy Martian sword ... and Lucas stepped on Iris Chanler's dead and blood-soaked arm.
He went staggering sideways, slipping in the half-dried blood she and Dallis had spilled so thickly across the carpeted deck, and as he struck in vain at Thorne the Captain leaned swiftly forward across Iris' body and drove his straight blade half-way to the hilt between the golden links of the pirate's golden chain.
He did not die easily, Chain Lucas. Sprawled across the corpse of Dallis, he writhed and screamed, a hideous, bubbling scream of anger and fear. He clawed for the gun Thorne had dropped and Thorne pierced his arm to the bone. And when he managed to scrabble to his knees, still wielding the knife, the Captain stepped forward relentlessly.
"This for Banya Tor," he whispered. And Chain Lucas, once the Inspector-General of the Planet Patrol, died as he had lived, a renegade and a traitor.
Slowly Thorne sheathed his sword. He did not wipe it. He put his gun in the holster at his belt.
Looking down at the dead, he spun the jeweled dial set in his own massive golden belt-buckle. He lifted a tiny ball from the hidden compartment revealed by the opening and spoke wearily into the screen set in the polished sphere.
"You heard, Captain Bannerman?"
"Everything, Thorne. Everything." Bannerman's voice quavered and broke. "Unbelievable."