around a table where six candles burned in a silver candelabrum.

He kicked open the window. The woman looked at him, neither frightened nor alarmed. She was wearing an odd black dress, long-sleeved, high-necked, with a hemline that touched the floor. Her face was pale and wrinkled, unrelieved by any sort of cosmetic.

She held out her fragile hands. "You did come, Karl! I knew you wouldn't disappoint Auntie."

Hunter cried through clenched teeth, "I want Werner von Rausch. Where is he?"

"Goodness, dear, how should I know? Werner never comes to my parties."

Hunter noticed the table, then, set for eight, its gleaming silver and gold-rimmed china glowing in the soft candle light.

"Your Cousin Charlotte's already here, Karl." The woman gestured gracefully toward the table. "And little Helmig. They know how important it is to come on time."

He felt horror—and unconscious pity—as he realized the truth. Yet he tried once more to get from her the information he wanted.

"Oh, bother with Werner," she answered, pouting. "If you must know, I didn't even invite him. He's such a bore among young people."

She saw the blaster in Hunter's hand and pushed it aside gently, with a grimace of disapproval. "I don't like you to have these toys, Karl. Next thing, you'll be wanting to join the army."

Hunter flung himself out of that room, into a dark and musty hall. Behind him he heard the woman still talking, as if he had never left her. He blundered from one bleak room to another, rooms that were like tombs smelling of dust and decay.

On the second floor he came upon a small, balding man who sat reading at a desk in a room crammed with tottering stacks of old books. The light came from an antiquated electric lamp. Obviously the house had its own generating plant, independent of the power center Hunter had destroyed.

Hunter jerked up his blaster again. "Werner von Rausch?"

"One moment," the man said. Ignoring Hunter, the man quietly finished what he was reading, slipped a leather placemark into the book, and put it on top of a stack beside the desk. The pile promptly collapsed in a cloud of dust at Hunter's feet.

Max 

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