Voal came over. The wrath that had ravaged his face still smoldered sullenly in his eyes. “Now that I have her back,” he said, “how do you know I’ll continue to follow your dictates?”

“I’ve come to know you in the last few days,” answered Alak coolly. “One thing I’ve found out is that, unlike me, you’re a perfectly honest man, and you want to do what you think is right. That makes it possible for me to take an oath of secrecy from you and reveal something which will—I hope—change your attitude on this whole matter.”

“That will have to be something extraordinary,” said Voal icily.

“It is. If we could find a private place—?”

Slinh looked wistfully after the two men as they entered the house. He’d give a lot to eavesdrop on that conference. He had a shrewd suspicion that the greatest secret in the Galaxy was about to be revealed—which could have been useful to him.

They were in Voal’s study before Alak said: “I want to get over that barrier of hostility to me you still have. I think you’re objective enough to have seen in the last few days that the Patrol has no desire to oppress Luan or discriminate against it. Our job is to keep the peace, no more and no less, but that involves a paradox which we have only been able to resolve by methods unknown to policemen of any other kind. You can’t forgive my murderousness toward your child—but I repeat that there never was any. We would not have harmed her under any circumstances. But we had to make you think otherwise till my job was done.”

“I can stand it myself,” said Voal grimly. “But what my wife went through—”

“That was tough, wasn’t it?” Suddenly the bitterness was alive and corrosive on Alak’s face. Contempt twisted his thin lips. “Yes, that was really rugged, all three days of it. Have you ever thought how many millions of mothers this holy war of yours would have left without any prospect of getting their children back?”

Voal looked away from his bleak eyes and, for lack of better occupation, began to fumble with bottles and glasses. Alak accepted his drink but went on speaking:

“The basic secret of the League Patrol—and I want your solemn oath you will never breathe a word of it to anyone—” he waited till Voal gave agreement, “is this: The Patrol may under no circumstances take life. We may not kill.”

He paused to let it sink in, then added; “We have a few impressive-looking battleships to show the Galaxy and overawe planets when necessary, but they have never fought and never will. The rest of the mighty fleet is—nonexistent! Faked pictures and cooked news stories! Patrolmen may have occasion to carry lethal weapons, but if they ever use them it means mnemonic erasure and discharge from the service. We encourage fiction about the blazing guns of the Patrol—we write quite a bit ourselves and call it news releases—but it has absolutely no basis in fact.”