first suspicious move on the part of a man he hated.

Was there any other way? Perhaps there was ... a quite simple way. Why couldn't he simply ask the guard to step into the cell and request permission to talk to him? He would plead urgency, but do it very casually, arouse the man's curiosity without antagonizing him too much. No need to be crafty, await some unlikely opportunity, or anything of the sort.

Simply overpower the man—straight off, without any fuss.

It had happened before, but that very fact would make the guard contemptuous, more than ever convinced that the first time he hadn't really been taken by surprise at all. His pride would make him want to believe that. He was the kind of man who could rationalize a humiliating defeat and blot it completely from his memory.

It not only worked, it worked better than he could have dared hope. When he spoke a few words through the door, the guard became instantly curious. He unlocked the cell and came in, his eyes narrowed in anger ... anger, but not suspicion. His gun remained on his hip as he walked up to Corriston and stood directly facing him, well within grappling range.

"Well, what do you want to talk to me about?" he demanded. "Better make it brief. I'm not supposed to talk to you at all."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Corriston said. "You've got no idea how depressing it is to be locked up in a narrow cell with absolutely no one to talk to."

"You don't like it, eh? Well, you brought it on yourself."

Corriston caught the man about the waist and brought his right fist down three times on his curving back. Each blow was a powerful one, slanting downward toward the kidney.

Then Corriston hit the guard directly in the small of the back, with an even more punishing blow. The cumulative effect was instantaneous. The guard collapsed and sank down like a suddenly deflated balloon, the breath whistling from between his teeth.

Corriston watched him sink to the floor and straighten out. Forewarned as he was, he was still appalled by the almost instant, shocking change in the man's expression. For the second time the guard's features began to come apart. The entire upper portion of his face seemed to sink inward and broaden out, and the flowing began, the incredible refusal of his forehead and nose to remain in close proximity to his 

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