in his eyes said even more. I stood ever so still.

Heaving up from his chair, he came around the desk, pocketing my own paragun in the process. "You're an ingenious man, Traynor. So I know you'll appreciate ingenuity in another. You see, a buzzer can be under a desk just as well as on top of it. And sometimes, instead of buzzing, it turns on a magnetic field strong enough to jerk an anvil clear across the room. I've found it quite effective in discouraging would-be assassins. It's so unanticipated—like this—"

The controller had come abreast of me as he spoke. Now, without warning, he suddenly hammered a sledge-like fist straight to the pit of my stomach.

Retching, I lurched back; bent double.

Savagely, Kruze brought up a rock-hard knee, square into my face.

Jagged pain-colors exploded in my brain. I crashed to the floor, the room swirling around me.

Kruze again; words coming from afar: "No noise, now, Traynor! As you warned me, we mustn't attract the attention of my guards. We'll just leave the way you came—down the shaft-lift, into the space-warp, and then away on a little trip."

Groggily, prodded on by kicks, I lurched to my feet ... stumbled back to the alcove and the shaft-lift. My nose was bleeding badly. My belly screamed protest at every step.

Down, now; all the way down, with Kruze and his gun crowded close against me. Then a death-march that ran the length of the corridor from the lift to the space-warp chamber.

When I lagged at the entry-hatch, my captor gave me yet another kick, from behind and to the hinge of my left knee, so that I fell through the slot bodily, sprawling on my face on the stone-hard floor inside.

More kicks, as Kruze himself entered. I lurched from his path and, shaking, dragged myself onto the nearest bench. My nails gouged the plasticon in stiff-fingered spasms of pure homicidal fury. But always, always, there was the gun in Kruze's hand—an unwavering gun, centered dead upon me and backed with eyes as bleak and chill as far-off Pluto's ice-mass.

Now Kruze stepped to the warp-board, adjusting controls with swift, sure skill. "This should interest you, Traynor." He talked as he worked, a cool, conversational monolog. "As you know, a space-warp calls for both transmitting and receiving units. For round-trip travel, you have to have both 

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