I

on Aarn a man was murdered and Dumarest watched him die.

It was a thing quickly done in a place close to the landing field: a bright tavern of gleaming comfort just beyond the main gate of the high perimeter fence, a cultured place of softness and gentle lighting snugly set on a cultured world. The raw violence was all the more unexpected because of that.

Dumarest saw it all as he stood with his back to a living mural in which naked women swam in an emerald sea and sported with slimed beasts of obscene proportions. Before him, scattered over soft carpets, the customers of the tavern lounged in chairs or stood at the long bar of luminescent wood. An assorted crowd of crewmen and officers, field personnel, traders, and transients. Bright among them was the gaudy finery of pleasure girls, flaunting their charms. Soft music saturated from the carved ceiling and perfumed smoke stained the air.

Against the softness and luxury the killer looked like a skull at a feast: tall, horribly emaciated, eyes smoldering in the blotched skin of his face. He was a mutant with mottled hair and hands grotesquely large, a sport from some frontier world. He crossed to the long bar, snatched up a bottle of heavy glass and, without hesitation, smashed it on the back of his unsuspecting victim's head. Half-stunned, dazed, the man turned-and received the splintered shards in face and throat.

"Damn you!" The mutant dropped the stained weapon as he spat at the dying man. "Remember me? I swore I'd get you and I have. It's taken years but I did it. You hear me? I did it! I got you, you stinking bastard! Now roast in hell!"

A woman screamed and men came from the shadows to grasp the killer. Dumarest took two long strides towards the door then paused, thinking. The tavern was close to the field, police could not be far away and it was possible that he had already been noticed. To leave now would be to in shy;vite suspicion with the resultant interrogation and intermi shy;nable delay. He regained his position before the mural as of shy;ficers poured into the tavern. On Aarn the police were highly efficient, and they moved quickly about the tavern as they quested for witnesses. Not surprisingly they discovered them hard to find.