caught off guard and spun sharply about.

"Help me, somebody," Ria cried wildly. "The cops are taking me in. I haven't done anything."

The mob clotted around the pair, snarling angrily.

Heydrick reached for his gun, just as somebody threw a spanner. He dodged, heard Ria's voice shout a welcome, "Thorsan," and that was all. A sharp jab in his cheek as the paralysis needle went home was the last he knew. Darkness rushed over him in a smothering cloud.

Someone kept slapping him. He felt as if he were trying to swim in thick syrup. The light on the desk shone blindingly in his eyes. He got his hand up to shield his eyes, then they struck it down. He blinked sharply awake.

Behind the desk sat a handsome man. Pale blue eyes that probed deeply, plump cheeks, thick blonde eyebrows, muscular shoulders. Heydrick had seen him before. Where? Oh, yes—the pieces clicked together. The Feyjak investigation. The man had testified against Ria Tarsen, reluctantly, the Visiphone News had commented. He had been Feyjak's assistant, Ria's friend.

Thorsan drummed the desk with his fingers. "Heydrick, you've given us a lot of trouble. You probably want to know where you are. You're in the underground galleries below Level 1. We have our headquarters here. I am the head man of the Wildings."

Heydrick's brain spun. He fought back the whirl and tried to think calmly.

Below the lowest inhabited level of Canal City 4 were endless mazes of caverns, galleries and abandoned mine-shafts.

Rumor said that bands of outlaws roamed among the savages, second and third generations of the outcast rebels who long-ago had been driven to the refuge of the city's ratholes. Banded together by their common hatreds, these outlaws had built up a strong organization known as the Wildings. There was some talk that numbers of them had infiltrated the City's government; men of dangerous ability, infinite cunning, and vicious philosophy, whose sole aim was the overthrow of the Government of Scientists.

Heydrick's heart turned suddenly to ashes as he realized that Ria Tarsen must have been a Wilding. Surely no group would have gone to the trouble of instigating riots merely to rescue an outsider, however innocent. It was all clear now, painfully clear.

Thorsan must have divined the nature of 

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