before it began to dim, to grow black as if some intangible hole were opening to let it through. Then the shadow-thing was outside the blue flower. The police captain's thumb pointed down. Atomic lightning from the police rifles lashed at the shadow-thing.

Wing saw the lethal bolts strike the shadow. Then a blast of sound and light deluged him, spinning him off his feet, hurling him against a blackness shot through with pain and searing heat. The pain and the heat were still branded on his mind--raw wounds that made him want to scream out in protest--as he crept slowly back to awareness of the things around him.

His ears came to life first--and he heard the voice whispering over and over again. "Oh, Curt. Oh, Curt." Then his skin was responding to the warm, vibrant fingers caressing his cheek. Into his nostrils came the sweet scent of her loveliness. His eyes opened and he saw the soft brown head cradled on his breast.

Then his mind brushed aside the memory of pain and heat.

"We failed, didn't we?" He didn't recognize the broken, almost lifeless voice as his own.

Pat lifted her head. She didn't need to speak, not when her blue eyes were so eloquent.

"Dead-Eye?" Wing asked.

"Don't you fret, Captain. I'm all in one piece, even if Elizabeth did give me six nasty powder burns on my leg."

Curt Wing wearily turned his bandaged head, beheld a mound of bandages sprawled atop the bed beside him.

"You sure look like a hangover, Dead-Eye," Wing observed. Then: "Was it bad, Pat?"

She nodded. "Only a half dozen out of all those hundreds escaped. Most of them were killed in the explosion. The medics don't know how anyone came out alive--especially you and Dead-Eye. You were right in the center of the blast."

"Well," Wing observed, and it was an effort to speak lightly, but something had to be done about the horror in her voice, "I don't feel the least bit alive. Maybe I'm a ghost."

Her laughter was a relief, but a little too full for such a flimsy joke. So he said:

"I suppose the shadow-thing wasn't harmed." It was more a statement than a question.

"No," she said flatly. And in the same flat voice, added, "I'd better go. You need rest and quiet."

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