I didn't avoid it in time, and we went down, rolling over and over on the floor. His arm went around my throat, squeezing off my air. I managed to get a finger on the Damakoi's hand. I grabbed and twisted, and the arm came from around my throat. * * * * * He turned a little, and landed a solid left to my temple which filled the room with bursting stars. I shook my head to clear it and fended off another blow with my arm. His guard was down, and I saw my chance. My left drove into the pit of his stomach, and he doubled up, all the breath knocked out of him. Then my right fist came up from somewhere around my knees and slammed into his jaw. The hard uppercut lifted him off his feet and slammed him back against the invisible wall. He slumped to the floor, unconscious. _Good old one-two_, I thought as I rubbed my knuckles. * * * * * The guards on the other side of the wall had finally managed to hold down Holdreth Khain. Ned Dearborn burst through the door behind me. "You okay, Chief?" "I'm all right," I told him, "but I think we have a couple of dying Damakoi on our hands." Ned walked over and looked at the Damakoi I had just slugged. "How did they figure they'd get away with it?" he asked. "Actually, it was a pretty good scheme," I told him. "They knew they couldn't get one man in here with a theta bomb; they'd never get past the guards and the detectors. "So they planted a couple of spheres of ditherium in _two_ men--a negative sphere in one and a positive sphere in the other. All they had to do was stand close to each other, and the bomb would go off." "What was it that tipped you off?" Ned asked. "Several things. That phony note at the Hotel Granada, for instance. It was a plant to prove to me that there really was such a person as 'Zorvash Pedrik'--which there isn't, of course. "In order to find the phony note, they had to give us a clue as to where it was. So they used a harmless neutrino generator, which would be spotted by our detectors. "But a _real_ assassin who actually knew that Holdreth Khain was working with us would have used something less harmless. Why an expensive neutrino generator, when some cheap radioactive would do? _Because he didn't want to kill Holdreth Khain!_ "And that meant that our friendly Damakoi was a phony." Ned shook his head. "What a screwy idea. Get two men in instead of one." "Exactly," I said. "But if they maneuvered it so that one of the Damakoi could get himself in my good graces and get himself into the building--our detectors couldn't pick up just _one_ sphere of ditherium, of course--and then put him in a position where the other half of the bomb would have to be brought to him as a logical part of the investigation--" * * * * * "Then that's why Holdreth Khain burned himself!" Ned expostulated.