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can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and I'm responsible?"

"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."

Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000 per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.

I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced arrival.

The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a moment and turned to eye the newcomer.

I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I did come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against crackpots.

In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me to do."

I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself! He's—"

Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.

Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting himself off.

He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get you."

I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.

"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who caused their trouble. In this case, you."

I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a full-bodied laugh.

"Funny," I said.

"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.

"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and killed himself, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the tackle job."

"Don't mention it," Gorb said.

I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the local laws?"

"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian and the fine of—"

"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out of this mess with our skins intact."

"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.

Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.

"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help you. I can."

"You?" I said.

"I can get you out of this cheap."

"How cheap?"

Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"

I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand, giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.

"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and the contract. Otherwise, nothing."

Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"

Before the police could interfere, Gorb trotted over to the hulking corpse of the Kallerian and fetched it a mighty kick.

"Wake up, you faker! Stop playing possum and stand up! You aren't fooling anyone!"

The Ghrynians got off the huddled little assassin and tried to stop Gorb. "Your pardon, but the dead require your respect," began one of the lizards mildly.

Gorb whirled angrily. "Maybe the dead do—but this character isn't dead!"

He knelt and said loudly in the Kallerian's dishlike ear, "You might as well quit it, Heraal. Listen to this, you shamming mountain of meat—your mother knits doilies for the Clan Verdrokh!"

The supposedly dead Kallerian emitted a twenty-cycle rumble that shook the floor, and clambered to his feet, pulling the sword out of his body and waving it in the air. Gorb leaped back nimbly, snatched up the Stortulian's fallen blaster, and trained it neatly on the big alien's throat before he could do any damage. The Kallerian grumbled and lowered his sword.

I felt groggy. I thought I knew plenty about non-terrestrial life-forms, but I was learning a few things today. "I don't understand. How—"

The police were blue with chagrin. "A thousand pardons, Earthman. There seems to have been some error."

"There seems to have been a cute little con game," Gorb remarked quietly.

I recovered my balance. "Try to milk me of a hundred grand when there's been no crime?" I snapped. "I'll say there's been an error! If I weren't a forgiving man, I'd clap the bunch of you in jail for attempting to defraud an Earthman! Get out of here! And take that would-be murderer with you!"

They got, and they got fast, burbling apologies as they went. They had tried to fox an Earthman, and that's a dangerous sport. They dragged the cocooned form of the Stortulian with them. The air seemed to clear, and peace was restored. I signaled to Auchinleck and he slammed the door.

"All right." I looked at Gorb and jerked a thumb at the Kallerian. "That's a nice trick. How does it work?"

Gorb smiled pleasantly. He was enjoying this, I could see. "Kallerians of the Clan Gursdrinn specialize in a kind of mental discipline, Corrigan. It isn't too widely known in this area of the Galaxy, but men of that clan have unusual mental control over their bodies. They can cut off circulation and nervous-system response in large chunks of their bodies for hours at a stretch—an absolutely perfect imitation of death. And, of course, when Heraal put the sword through himself, it was a simple matter to avoid hitting any vital organs en route."

The Kallerian, still at gunpoint, hung his head in shame. I turned on him. "So—try to swindle me, eh? You cooked this whole fake suicide up in collusion with those cops."

He looked quite a sight, with that gaping slash running clear through his body. But the wound had begun to heal already. "I regret the incident, Earthman. I am mortified. Be good enough to destroy this unworthy person."

It was a tempting idea, but a notion was forming in my showman's mind. "No, I won't destroy you. Tell me—how often can you do that trick?"

"The tissues will regenerate in a few hours."

"Would you mind having to kill yourself every day, Heraal? And twice on Sundays?"

Heraal looked doubtful. "Well, for the honor of my Clan, perhaps—"

Stebbins said, "Boss, you mean—"

"Shut up. Heraal, you're hired—$75 a week plus expenses. Stebbins, get me a contract form—and type in a clause requiring Heraal to perform his suicide stunt at least five but no more than eight times a week."

I felt a satisfied glow. There's nothing more pleasing than to turn a swindle into a sure-fire crowd-puller.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Corrigan?" asked Ildwar Gorb in a quietly menacing voice. "We had a little agreement, you know."

"Oh. Yes." I moistened my lips and glanced shiftily around the office. There had been too many witnesses. I couldn't back down. I had no choice but to write out a check for five grand and give Gorb a standard alien-specimen contract. Unless....

"Just a second," I said. "To enter Earth as an alien exhibit, you need proof of alien origin."

He grinned, pulled out a batch of documents. "Nothing to it. Everything's stamped and in order—and anybody who wants to prove these papers are fraudulent will have to find Wazzenazz XIII first!"

We signed and I filed the contracts away. But only then did it occur to me that the events of the past hour might have been even more complicated than they looked. Suppose, I wondered, Gorb had conspired with Heraal to stage the fake suicide, and rung in the cops as well—with contracts for both of them the price of my getting off the hook?

It could very well be. And if it was, it meant I had been taken as neatly as any chump I'd ever conned.

Carefully keeping a poker face, I did a silent burn. Gorb, or whatever his real name was, was going to find himself living up to that contract he'd signed—every damn word and letter of it!

We left Ghryne later that week, having interviewed some eleven hundred alien life-forms and having hired fifty-two. It brought the register of our zoo—pardon me, the Institute—to a nice pleasant 742 specimens representing 326 intelligent life-forms.

Ildwar Gorb, the Wazzenazzian—who admitted that his real name was Mike Higgins, of St. Louis—turned out to be a tower of strength on the return voyage. It developed that he really did know all there was to know about alien life-forms.

When he found out I had turned down the 400-foot-long Vegan because the upkeep would be too big, Gorb-Higgins rushed off to the Vegan's agent and concluded a deal whereby we acquired a fertilized Vegan ovum, weighing hardly more than an ounce. Transporting that was a lot cheaper than lugging a full-grown adult Vegan, besides which, he assured me that the infant beast could be adapted to a diet of vegetables without any difficulty.

He made life a lot easier for me during the six-week voyage to Earth in our specially constructed ship. With fifty-two alien life-forms aboard, all sorts of dietary problems arose, not to mention the headaches that popped up over pride of place and the like. The Kallerian simply refused to be quartered anywhere but on the left-hand side of the ship, for example—but that was the side we had reserved for low-gravity creatures, and there was no room for him there.

"We'll be traveling in hyperspace all the way to Earth," Gorb-Higgins assured the stubborn Kallerian. "Our cosmostatic polarity will be reversed, you see."

"Hah?" asked Heraal in confusion.

"The cosmostatic polarity. If you take a bunk on the left-hand side of the ship, you'll be traveling on the right-hand side all the way there!"

"Oh," said the big Kallerian. "I didn't know that. Thank you for explaining."

He gratefully took the stateroom we assigned him.

Higgins really had a way with the creatures, all right. He made us look like fumbling amateurs, and I had been operating in this business more than fifteen years.

Somehow Higgins managed to be on the spot whenever trouble broke out. A highly strung Norvennith started a feud with a pair of Vanoinans over an alleged moral impropriety; Norvennithi can be very stuffy sometimes. But Gorb convinced the outraged being that what the Vanoinans were doing in the washroom was perfectly proper. Well, it was, but I'd never have thought of using that particular analogy.

I could list half a dozen other incidents in which Gorb-Higgins' special knowledge of outworld beings saved us from annoying hassles on that trip back. It was the first time I had ever had another man with brains in the organization and I was getting worried.

When I first set up the Institute back in the early 2920s, it was with my own capital, scraped together while running a comparative biology show on Betelgeuse IX. I saw to it that I was the sole owner. And I took care to hire competent but unspectacular men as my staffers—men like Stebbins, Auchinleck and Ludlow.

Only now I had a viper in my bosom,

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