"... knocked apart so I have to use one of the observation lenses they have planted around the embassy. He's shooting up the place good!" "I'm taping until someone gets here," said Rosenkrantz. "Better tell me what happened, just in case." _Yoleen_, thought Westervelt. _That would be ... let me see ... Gerson, the kidnap case. Do they mean that he's shooting them up?_ "... and after he left me with this mess, in the com room, he headed for the stairs," said the voice of the unseen operator. "He seems to be trying to get out of the embassy. We don't know why--the boys got him there without any trouble." "Was he all right?" asked Rosenkrantz, cocking an ear at the door. "He looked pretty sick, as if he wasn't eating well, and he had a broken wrist. They took him along to the doctor with no trouble. Then the chief went up to see how he was and found Doc out cold on the floor. He set up a yell, naturally. Someone finally caught up with Gerson in the military attache's office." "What did he want there?" asked Rosenkrantz. "We don't know yet. He left a corpse for us that isn't answering questions." FIFTEEN In the building to which the two terrans had brought him, Gerson crouched behind the ornate balustrade edging the mezzanine. He was near the head of the stairway and hoped to get nearer. A look down the hall behind him showed no unwary heads in view. He studied the sections of the hall below, which he could see through the openings in the railing. There had been a great scrambling about down there a moment earlier, so he was uneasy about showing himself. He had armed himself as chance provided: a rocket pistol of Yoleenite manufacture--doubtless purchased as a souvenir--and a sharp knife from a dinner tray he had come upon in one of the rooms he had searched. Because of his injury, he had to grip the knife between his teeth. Something bothered him about this arrangement. He had the papers thrust in his shirt, he held the rocket pistol in one hand, one hand was hurt--yet the only way left to hold the knife was in his teeth. It did not seem exactly right, but he had had no time to ponder. The Terrans were keeping him busy. Since he had been brought to this building, he had seen four threes of Terrans. One, the medical worker, he had rendered helpless. Then he had gone to search for secrets, and that other one had seen him. By that time, he had found the rocket pistol. He had left that Terran dead, but others had come running. Something had told him to shoot up the communications equipment, although the Terran working it had escaped. He was somewhere behind Gerson, behind one of the many doors leading off that high, bright corridor. He believed that he had seen one other duck into a doorway ahead of him, along the hall on the other side of the mezzanine. There was yet another hiding behind the opposite balustrade. Gerson wondered idly if the last one was armed.