Two doctors were in attendance. They studied him closely, tapped him, prodded him, and held long colloquies with each other. After a few minutes of this, one of them disappeared into the adjoining room of the medical office, apparently to prepare some sort of test.

The other Vegan doctor took a few steps back and consulted a bulky red-bound volume on his desk. Apparently he'd never seen a seizure like this before.

With one bound Lawrence was off the bed and at the doctor's side. He whirled him around, smashed a fist into the medic's lean jaw, another into his stomach.

From behind him came a shout of surprise, as the other doctor returned to the room. Quickly, Lawrence scooped the unconscious doctor up and hurled him at the other. They both went down in a shower of crashing glasswork, and Lawrence sprang on top of them. Three solid punches did the job.

He hastily ripped strips from the bed and bound them securely. Then he began to prowl through the drug cabinet.

It wasn't easy, trying to read the labels in the alien language, but James Lawrence was skilled in the handling of drugs, and before long he had found what he wanted despite his inability to read the labels.

It was a pain-killing drug, one that was in use on Earth as well as Vega. He could tell by the familiar sugary taste of the white powder that this was the stuff.

Humming softly to himself, he slipped the bottle under his overalls, waved farewell to the sleeping doctors, and ducked out the door.

Five minutes later, he was back in the airshaft, wielding his broom energetically. He forged on to the front of the group, heading further and further along in the airshaft, until finally he came to the place he was looking for—the tube that led to the heart of the air supply.

He looked around. No one was watching. He pushed open the door to the tube and slid quietly inside, trotting lightly until he reached the central pump.

"Sweet dreams," he said thoughtfully, as he inverted the bottle of the drug into the feeder that led to the pump. With that stuff filtering through the air, the whole base would be out like a light within an hour or so. There was enough knockout-potential in a bottle of that stuff, he thought, to keep everyone under wraps long enough for him to find Bette Bauer and get the blazes out of here.

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