be more powerful than he was, just because of a lack within himself. He was out to pull everybody down to his level, so he could stand out again and take over.

Still, Malloy thought, I may have something to say about that.

The men and a few women crawled through the semi-tropical Florida mud toward the low buildings glimmering in the light from the thin crescent of moon.

Malloy elbowed a foot closer to the hothouse breeding factory up to here in stinking muck. Any second now, he thought, somebody is going to roll over on a cottonmouth.

"Ready with your cloths," a man next to him relayed, first catching his attention and mostly lip-synching it.

Malloy dug out his Asphixion pad, and readied the tab to pull off the plastic coating. Clamped over the guards' faces, the catalytic agent would rapidly absorb the men's oxygen. With a partial vacuum in the mouth and larynx, no cries could carry and the victim would rapidly black out.

The pad would be removed and the guards would be allowed to catch up on their air intake. They wouldn't be harmed in any way final, so their emergency psi warning system wasn't supposed to cut in.

Malloy shrugged.

The plan would never work.

It was based on equal parts of megalomania and wishful thinking.

Malloy's only problem was when and how to best expose the plot before it was found out without his help.

He couldn't stand up and shout a warning. If he tried that, one of the fanatic Jockeys was sure to clamp an Asphixion pad over his face, and, with him, they might not be considerate enough to remove it.

Only a treacherous, self-seeking rat would even think of exposing these poor misguided people and betraying his own race to some extra-terrestrial viruses.

Malloy's elbows slipped out from under him and he went face first into the mud.

He forced himself to keep from spluttering and lifted his head. Where had that idea come from?

For one adrenalin-charged moment, he thought he had finally acquired a Rider.

But no. A Rider would hardly urge him to carry out an attack against the citadel of existence to 

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