I waited till he'd passed me. Then, coming up fast, I chopped with a stiff palm-edge at the base of his brain.

He pitched forward. Not even waiting to strike again, or see if he was stunned, or snatch his paragun, I sprinted for the door.

The messenger still stood in the corridor, just outside. Only now, unfortunately, he didn't look quite so stupid or nondescript as before.

Also, he had his hands up in a strega-fighter's stance.

That made him a Security agent.

I dived at him—a literal dive: head down, arms wide, feet and body completely clear of the floor.

The man spun sidewise, fast, with all of a trained strega-fighter's skill.

But my left arm scooped him in, and my weight and impact bore him down. I drove up the heel of my right hand, hard under his chin. His head snapped back.

Spasmodically, he shoved at me with hands and feet alike—trying to break clear, striving to regain the inter-body space that gives a strega-man his advantage.

For an instant I held him tight, then abruptly and without warning matched his efforts to thrust clear with similar of my own. As if spring-propelled, we bounced to opposite sides of the hall.

Strega tactics said it was a time for maneuvering, regrouping, consolidation.

Instead, scrambling on all fours, I rocketed down the corridor and away as fast as I could go.

There were ramps, after that ... doors and archways ... more corridors.

Then, at long last, the building entrance yawned ahead.

Sobbing for breath, I raced towards it.

Simultaneously, a knot of hurrying men appeared, crowding in from the street and blocking off the doorway. They were grouped about a bulky, familiar figure ... the figure of FedGov Interplanetary Security Controller Alfred Kruze.

For me, it was a moment straight out of nightmare ... a lightning-flash of horror, lifted from one of those awful dreams in which you run and run and run only somehow your legs won't seem to work.

Desperately, I tried to reverse direction.

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