Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition, December 1955 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION to his own desk and got to work. Half the organization had been lost or compromised in the kidnaping. He had to reassemble and reinforce what was left. But it was downhill work, now. Marak had her edge. Demaris jerked his head at the medical technicians. One of them jammed a hypodermic through the Geneiid’s skin and shot in a neutralizer. Demaris stood idly by, whistling between his teeth. It was a touch-and-go business. He’d tried to put himself in the Geneiid’s place, and he’d decided that if he were suddenly kidnaped, he wouldn’t use his Agency weapons until it became completely obvious that there was no other resort. So far, so good. The Geneiid—if he wasn’t a Geneiid—was still alive, and he’d been taken with no more trouble than you’d expect. But the man might revive in a panic. He whistled a bit more loudly. “Oh, we are the Agency's bravos— We peddle the wealth of our skill—” The Genetid’s eyelids fluttered upward. It seemed to Demaris that the man looked at him with an intensity peculiar for even these circumstances. “Ah, we are the Agency’s offspring, The brood of a sinful old maid—” The Geneiid sat up and stared malevolently at Demaris. ““How did this happen?” he asked in passable Marakian. The technicians giggled. Sath, looking up from his desk, grinned coldly. Demaris smiled without humor. 66 . Unless things were such that it paid.” The Geneiid looked around the office in dawning comprehension that meant one thing to everyone else and something quite different to Demaris. “IT see—”’ he said slowly. ““What now?” Demaris reflected that there was the best question he’d heard in a long time. He wondered if the other man thought Demaris was in on a deliberate double-cross. If he did, almost anything might happen. He had no idea how he’d react in similar circumstances. “I fear, my friend,’ Demaris said in passable Genetian, “that the Fates, which might just as easily have conspired against me, have seen fit to trip you up, instead.” It wasn’t a bad start. From an observer’s point of view, it was the kind of dialogue you might expect from two opposed professional men in the apparent circumstances. Well, it was, Lord knew—it was. No matter what your concept of the circumstances might be. The Geneiian looked at the floor in glum anger. Demaris could under- stand that. It was only by the grace of making the first move that he himself was not sitting in a Geneiian office somewhere, slowly digesting the fact that he was one of two ends being. played against Old Man Sullivan’s middle. Commiclooolkkxs.comn