The other inspector carried a light machine gun and a box of grenades. "I better cover," he said.

"Thanks," Rashid said.

The inspector slid out of the car and ran to a clump of bushes. The driver pushed in the accelerator. As they swerved toward the south, Read saw a dozen armed men run out of the house. A grenade arced from the bushes, and the pursuers recoiled from the cloud that rose before them.

"Is he all right?" the driver asked.

"I don't think I hurt him." Rashid took a syrette from his vest pocket. "Well, Read, it looks like we’re in for a fight. In a few minutes Miaka Station will know we're coming. And God knows what will happen at the Game Preserve."

Read wanted to jump out of the car. He could die any minute. But he had set his life on a well-oiled track and he couldn't get off until they reached Geneva.

"They don't know who's coming," he said. "They don't make them tough enough to stop this boy."

Staring straight ahead, he didn't see the sergeant smile.

Two types of recruits are accepted by the UN Inspector Corps: those with a fanatical loyalty to the ideals of peace and world order, and those who are loyal to nothing but themselves. Read was the second type.

A tall, lanky Negro, he had spent his school days in one of the drab suburbs that ring every prosperous American city. It was the home of factory workers, clerks, semiskilled technicians, all who do the drudge work of civilization and know they will never do more. The adults spent their days with television, alcohol, and drugs; the young spent their days with gangs, sex, television, and alcohol. What else was there? Those who could have told him neither studied nor taught at his schools. What he saw on the concrete fields between the tall apartment houses marked the limits of life's possibilities.

He had belonged to a gang called The Golden Spacemen. "Nobody fools with me," he bragged. "When Harry Read's out, there's a tiger running loose." No one knew how many times he nearly ran from other clubs, how carefully he picked the safest spot on the battle line.

"A man ought to be a man," he once told a girl. "He ought to do a man's work. Did you ever notice how our fathers look, how they sleep so much? I don't want to be like that. I want to be something proud."

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