building's left wing and fairly isolated, and he could merely stand here and wait for the far end of his shift.

She slid along the wall. Her feet moved with a vague whispering silence, the silence of unconscious stealth. But then the guard turned to place his heel more comfortably on the inward-sloping bottom of the tube. And he saw her.

He grinned. "Mary!" he said. Everyone knew her. And everyone loved Mary. "What are you doing out here?"

He could never guess the truth, she thought. Even if someone told you, you would never believe it.

The good humor spontaneously beginning to bubble from the fat guard was changed into a kind of gasping cough of unbelieving fear. Desperate words filtered out through his teeth. A white line moved around his lips. His hands reached out and hung suspended.

"Mary—Oh God, Mary—the gun, that's—that's a real gun, Mary—"

The charge was light. It contacted the Guard's face just above the chin. It dissolved instantly all of his face and most of his brain. It left only a smeared shell of bone behind, like a bowl tipped up.

She ran on down the slightly curving tube. They were never never so kind to me. For he is free from the directives that pull and push and pry and pick at the brain. He is free from pain.

When this was done, she would be free. As free as the guard.

Once near the rocket, the long task would be ended. She would then theoretically be free from the complex thought which her body was incapable of handling without pain. Free from the pain of an imbalanced body and nervous system. And free of the coercion bands, the directive waves that could sometimes rip the cells apart.

She pressed the down button of the elevator. At that moment the high scream of the alarm sirens shrieked in her ears. She cowered a moment. It came from all around. It bathed her in painful sound. It became a pervading throb that seemed to come from the metal everywhere.

They had discovered the guard already. That was one of those unpredictable elements. Purely chance that anyone would have passed there just after the guard was killed. That could be the only reason for the alarm!

She had to get outside the buildings. She had to get over there near enough to the rocket to blast the firing tubes! She wasn't even off the 

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