Writer: John Broome

Penciller: Mike Sekowsky

Inker: Bernard Sachs

Synopsis: Ilda stands inert in Mister Viozi's pawnshop and fumes over the fact that she was pawned not to meet his regular expenses, but so that he could romance a new girlfriend, one Crytsal Mera. It especially annoys Ilda because she feels that if Star marries her, she'd force him to give up private investigation for a safe desk job, and that Star would have no further use for her. To cheer herself up, Ilda turns on her internal television, which shows an odd new program on a channel she never tuned into before. On the program, she hears people speaking of getting Earth's secret codes in order to attack Earth, and that they have a spy close to someone who knows that code. Then the people Ilda sees salute one another in the way of the League of Five Planets, one of Earth's genuine enemies, and she deduces that she had just accidentally intercepted a transmission of the League's military television station. As Ilda decides what to do about the danger to Earth, and the possibility of specific danger to Star, who knows the Earth code, she watches someone try to sell a book of autographs to Mr. Viozi. She identifies the would-be seller as William Taffet, a master forger, and warns the pawnbroker not to accept the offer. Taffet flees, but Ilda alerts the police to his whereabouts, and Mr. Viozi, as a reward, reactivates Ilda and lets her free, cancelling the pawn charges. Ilda then goes to find Star, looking first at the apartment of Crystal Mera. Mera, meanwhile, is meeting with people who tell her that she is too slow in producing the secret codes she's supposed to get for them, and she agrees to their plan to ambush Star Hawkins and extract the code from his mind, and she offers the League of Five Planets salute. Just then, Ilda arrives, looking for Star, and Ilda tells Crystal that she has discovered the League of Five Planets spy who may be after Star. Crystal's confederates hearthis and attack Ilda, knocking her to the floor after a brief fight. Just as they are about to shoot Ilda, though, Star bursts in with several police officers, who handcuff Crystal Mera as well as the others. Star reveals to Ilda that he was on a top-secret mission for the government and had only been pretending to be in love with her to trap her. Later, back in the office, Ilda professes relief over their return to normal life, despite their being broke as usual.

Detective rating: Star does a good job of trapping the spy, although he was assigned that job rather than having to work out who the spies were to begin with. Also, Ilda does good work on recognizing the forger. Her discovery of the spy was total coincidence, though. Total for the whole story: 6 on a scale of 1 to 10.

All characters and images are copyright DC Comics.

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