wants is a clinic of her own so that she can help the maladjusted. But don't forget—she holds a priceless patent. Keep your blaster, my friend. I've an idea you may need it."

He gripped her wrist. "You know something about this?"

"I know the world we live in—nothing more."

"But you're guessing—"

"Later, Captain, after you start putting some facts together on your own." She pulled away from him. "If you want to find me again—and I think you will—look for me in Number thirty-four on the amusement level. Ask for Dawn."

Suddenly, for no reason that he could explain, he had for her a great sympathy. She was no ordinary woman. Her discernment was extraordinary, and she possessed, in addition, a strangely elusive charm.

They rode the lift as it moved up through the city level in its transparent, fairy-world shaft. Dawn got out first, at the mid-city walk-way where the cheapest shops and the gaudiest entertainment houses were crammed together. Dazzling in the glare of colored lights, the mid-city never slept. It was always thronged. It was the only area of the heartland—except for the top level casinos—open to every citizen without restriction.

On the levels immediately above it were the specialty shops, dealing in luxuries for the suburbanites who had fought, schemed and bribed their way out of the minimum housing. Higher still was the sector given over to the less expensive commercial hotels.

The upper levels were occupied by cartel executive offices and at the top, high enough to escape the smog and feel the warmth of the sun, were the fabulous casino resorts, the mansions built by the family dynasts who controlled the cartels, and the modest, limestone building housing the mockery which passed as government.

IV

Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entry probe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the short distance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. It was traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries of Consolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week before they might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outer reaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to the spaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involved in it himself.

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