atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death would be satisfying.

So the affair was coldly businesslike, with not even insults offered
to him. He was left to stand alone in the very center of the
landing-grid floor. There were a hundred blasters which would fire
upon him at the same instant. He would not only be killed; he would be
destroyed. He would be vaporized by the blue-white flames poured upon
him.

His death was remarkably close, nothing remaining but the order to
fire, when loudspeakers from the landing-grid office froze everything.
One of the grain ships from Weald had broken out of overdrive and its
pilot was triumphantly calling for landing coordinates. The grid
office relayed his call to loudspeaker circuits as the quickest way to
get it on the communication system of the whole planet.

"Calling ground," boomed the triumphant voice of the first of the
student pilots Calhoun had trained. "Calling ground! Pilot Franz in
captured ship requests coordinates for landing! Purpose of landing is
to deliver half a million bushels of grain captured from the enemy!"

At first, nobody dared believe it. But the pilot could be seen on
vision. He was known. No blueskin would be left alive long enough to
be used as a decoy by the men of Weald! Presently the giant ship on
its second voyage to Dara--the first had been a generation ago, when
it threatened death and destruction--appeared as a dark pinpoint in
the sky. It came down and down, and presently it hovered over the
center of the tarmac, where Calhoun composedly stood on the spot where
he was to have been executed.