The night clouds rolled across the steeples of Bristol and the muffled voice of a church clock somberly rolled across the city, striking the hour of ten. The hush of a chill autumn night lay across the city, mantling the fog that started to deepen in the city streets. In a small apartment on Regent street, a box-like machine sat quietly in a corner, staring at the growing gloom with fifty red, unwinking eyes. At five minutes after the hour, there was a flickering and then there were only forty-nine. By eleven o'clock, the eyes had been cut down to forty-six. The evening of the first, there were only thirty-nine. By the third, there was only a dozen. And every hour that went by saw another light wink out.... He stood in a Moscow subway station, watching the trains thunder past and keeping an eye on a trash can in a little niche near an elaborate mosaic of Malenkov. None of the comrades, he thought, would think of depositing litter near the mosaic of the leader and so the can had never been used. And since the cleaners knew it was never used, there was no earthly reason why it should have to be disturbed and emptied. So the can sat there and had never been touched. Except once. For a moment the platform was deserted and Stan walked rapidly back to the can. A moment later he held the fusion package in his hand.... Somebody barked something at him and he looked up, startled. A few yards away, there was a man in the uniform of the people's police. He could have been hiding for any one of a number of reasons, Stan thought. He could have been watching for petty thievery or perhaps there had been a drive against littering the platforms. But it didn't matter why he was there. The point was he was asking questions in Russian and Stan couldn't answer him. Another train roared in and people poured out of it, crowding together on the platform. Stan turned and darted for a washroom, breaking the wrappings on the fusion package as he ran. A moment later he had snapped the detonating wires and broken the delicate, clockwork mechanism and the almost infinitesimally small transceiver. He threw the remains of the package under the wheels of the train at the same time a pistol shot roared above his head, chipping off some of the tile of the ceiling. Then he had made it to the washroom door, passed his hand over a brass plaque, and darted through the circle of black that appeared into.... ... a dark corner of a bazaar in Damascus. The bazaar stretched down both sides of the street, terminating against a mosque at one end. There were small, open shops that sold copperware and incense burners and large metal dishes, ornately tooled. There were tables and boxes of elaborate mosaic work--tables with veneers of rare wood and inlaid with mother of pearl. There were small restaurants and notion stores and shops that displayed bolt after bolt of silk and brocade. * * * * *