Beside me, the thin guard choked; snatched for the paragun he carried in a hip holster.

He died before he could even get it clear.

The other guard, the heavy-set one, backed up against Controller Kruze's door, hands already raised. His breath rasped in his throat. His face was dough-grey.

For my part, I couldn't even speak.

And now, within the shaft-lift's cage, more movement ... another figure darting forward. A woman's figure.

I choked "Celeste—!"

"Oh, Mark, Mark...." She ran to me; flung her arms about me. "I was so afraid!"

My throat drew tight. I held her close, smoothing the soft golden halo that was her hair.

Only something was wrong. The hair—it didn't feel right....

I straightened, stiffened; stared down at the woman in my arms more intently.

Something was wrong with the eyes, too. They weren't the cool, clear grey that I remembered.

Celeste laughed softly.

But even as she did so, her face began to twist, to change. The features seemed to run together in an incredible distortion.

I tried to thrust her away from me, then.

Like magic, the warm arms twined about my neck reshaped and elongated. Before my eyes, the fleshtones were transformed to grey-green mottling.

Woman into Kel; Kel into woman. The end of an idyll.

I began to laugh ... louder and louder; more and more wildly. When one of the two-headed men tried to shake me, I spat in his face.

Furiously, he lashed out at me with the barrel of his paragun.

I didn't even try to dodge the blow....

CHAPTER V

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