gentlemen hear me mention the warping-chamber? Or am I going to be forced to take this scum back for trial by rocket freighter?"

Wordless, my captors shoved me towards a grav-car. I went without protest, making no effort to resist.

But as I walked, I let the feeling of the street close in upon me. The green-hazed black of the Rizalian night took on new, subtle overtones. Fragment by fragment, sense by sense, it blended and became one with the mass of tight-integrated information poured into my brain by the psychostructor.

This street—it would be AX7. And that meant the cross-street ahead was MR2.

Which was interesting, because MR2 was also a pneumotube route, complete with sewer-like conduits beneath the paving and access shafts at every corner.

So, if I could by some chance reach that intersection, and duck from sight behind the building....

How far was it? Fifty feet? Sixty?

The first of my captors reached the grav-car. Fumbling, he got out his lock-light.

The rest of us paused. Again, narrow-eyed, I measured the distance to the corner.

Smoothly, the lock-light slid into its tube. The grav-car's door swung open. One agent got in. A second stood aside, waiting for me and the men who held me.

Together, we stepped forward. Then I bent to enter the grav-car, and all let go of me momentarily.

There was just one man to my left, now. One man between me and the corner.

I bent still lower—and then, without warning, drove my shoulder hard into that man's midriff, bowling him aside as I raced madly towards the intersection.

But instantly, behind me, yells rose in wild chorus. Feet pounded pavement. Hands clutched for me.

Something was happening to my knees, too, and my lungs. They wouldn't work the way I needed for this kind of running. The fatigue of my earlier bouts was telling on them.

A last gasp; a last lunge. I spilled to the street.

The yells turned to hoarse, baying triumph.

 Prev. P 15/55 next