apologize. Rumor had it that deep space officers bore charmed lives, but Langford knew as he broke into a run that his life hung by a thread that might at any moment turn crimson.

Langford's fist lashed out suddenly, catching the youngster flush on the jaw....

No part of the field was unguarded. If the guards had orders to withhold their fire he saw a desperate chance of outwitting them; but if they had orders to blast, his fate was already sealed. As he ran he had a vision of himself sinking down in a welter of blood and blackness, his ears deafened by the hollow chant of concussion weapons. He saw himself lying spread out on the landing field, the taste of death in his mouth, the air above him filled with a harsh, eerie crackling.

He ran faster, ran like a man bemazed, his eyes filled with dancing motes that kept cascading down both sides of his oxygen mask. He was a hundred feet from the ship when he became aware that a dozen armed guards had emerged from shadows at the edge of the field and were converging upon him.

Angry curses whipped through the night and the field seemed to tilt as the guards came racing toward him. Far off in the darkness a siren wailed.

Langford suddenly realized that he was becoming light-headed from too much oxygen intake; his head was filled with a dull roaring, and seemed to be expanding. It was filled with flashing lights as well as sound, and was leaving his shoulders as he ran.

He had a sudden impulse to laugh and shout, to whoop at how ridiculous it was. His head had left his shoulders and was spinning about in the air. But before he could grasp the tube which was flooding his brain with hilarity, armed guards were all about him, raising their weapons to cover him and shouting at him to raise his arms.

Unfortunately he couldn't seem to move his arms. When he made the effort he went plunging and skidding over the ramp with running figures on both sides of him. He was skating, cutting capers on ice. Fantastic and incredible capers. Then the ice was inside his skull, swelling up thick; his heels were together when the lights in his head went out.

When the lights came on again Langford found himself stumbling forward into a blank-walled room with a steady pressure at his back. At first he thought the room was a cell, but when his vision adjusted itself to the glare he saw that he was facing a seated man whose head seemed to be dancing in the air.

 Prev. P 2/23 next