He made out a buddy team of Jockeys almost on top of the first Rider-ridden manned post. All the others had to be far ahead....

Malloy leaped to his feet—or tried to. He managed to slosh to his knees.

"Raid!" he screamed. "Jockeys are raiding the hothouse!"

The lights flared up, a magnesium, Fourth-of-July night glare. Guards with guns sprang from everywhere. The guns went into action. Clouds of crystalline Asphixion snowed down on the raiders.

From far back, Malloy watched in satisfaction.

The sound came from behind him.

The Commissioner blobbed forward, a distorted ball of slimy mud.

"I will crush you under my foot like a bloated white grub!" the fat man announced with sincerity.

Malloy's eyes narrowed in the darkness.

"Stay away from me Commissioner, or I'll push you down—way, way down!"

The blocky figure retreated a step, quivering impotently.

Malloy nodded to himself.

The Commissioner had spoken too knowingly of a terrible fear of falling.

The interrogator was the younger man who sat next to Dr. Heirson during Malloy's release from the hospital.

"I feel you'd like to know my identity, Mr. Malloy. My name is Pearson; I work for the federal government. Now would you tell me just what you hoped to gain by betraying the assault force of Jockeys?"

It was the crux of the matter.

Malloy took a deep breath and said it.

"I want a Rider. I want to be like everybody else. If you people have any sense of gratitude and justice—and you seem to—you'll set up some kind of scientific project to find out why I haven't caught a case of Riders and to see that I am properly infected."

Pearson leaned back in the other straight chair inside the rough-boarded outbuilding.

"Mr. Malloy, we know why none of the Riders who drifted in from outer space infected you. You 

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