But Hunter was sure Young had not taken that precaution. It would have involved risks he would not have to contend with at the clinic, unless he had been reasonably certain he would be found out. And Young had expected to prevent that by keeping Consolidated and United at each other's throats.

Hunter kicked open the door. The three small rooms in the cottage were empty—until a man wearing a union smock emerged from the narrow galley. He hadn't been there a moment before when Hunter examined the cubicle, and there was no rear entry to the cottage.

"Mr. Young isn't here, sir." The man said, gliding swiftly toward him. "If you wish to leave a message—"

Hunter saw the telltale grid wire in the stranger's forehead. He ducked aside instinctively as the knife gleamed in the man's hand. With an odd, sighing sound, the blade arched through the air, smashing the picture window. Hunter's fist shot out, and the man dropped unconscious.

Hunter went into the galley and found what he had missed before—the false bank of food slots which masked a narrow stairway. He ran quickly down the steps, and found the opulent living quarters Eric Young had concealed on the clinic floor beneath the innocent garden cottage. Here in gaudy splendor, in the tasteless clutter of objects assembled from every quarter of the cartel empire, was the true index to the infinite ambition of the U.F.W. boss.

A dozen men and women lurched at Hunter from an open hall. They wore white hospital robes and their foreheads were still bandaged. Obviously they were patients with recently grafted slave grids. Obedient to the transmission, they fought with a desperate, savage fury—and a clumsy lack of co-ordination which caricatured normal human behavior.

Hunter repulsed their attack without difficulty. Yet he felt an inner disgust and loathing as if he were using his strength to defeat helpless children. In two minutes it was over. One of the men was dead, his head bandage torn loose, and the grid ripped out of his skull. Three more lay sprawled out on the floor, bleeding badly from freshly opened incisions.

Hunter drew his blaster and entered the thickly-carpeted hall, glowing with the soft, pink light of the luminous, Martian stone. He cried Ann's name. His voice fell hollowly in the silence, but there was no response. He moved to the end of the hall and pushed open a narrow door.

He saw the white-tiled laboratory, Ann's 

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