The strain and uncertainty eased a little once we were fairly sure we wouldn't be blasted down without warning. It didn't take long for that near-assurance to harden into a conviction, for what happened after the big gate clanged shut behind us was almost a repeat of what had taken place in the nuclear fortress. More armed Wendel police guards fell into step on both sides of us, with much the same look on their faces the two at the entrance had worn ten seconds after their eyes had rested on the silver bird. Just one small incident took place which made it a little unlike the reception which had been accorded me when I'd asked to see Sherwood. We were held up at the end of a branching corridor while one of the guards went into a small, blank-walled room and buzzed Wendel on an interplant communicator, announcing our arrival. We didn't know that until later, because he was careful to shut the door of the room before he spoke into the communicator. When he came out there was a hardness around his eyes, a look of grim satisfaction that should have warned me that we were in danger. But you don't always attach as much weight as you should to a quick change of expression on the face of a man whose job requires him to resort to brutal violence two or three times a week. The face of such a man can harden just from habit. Because it was the kind of mistake it was easy to make and the other guards were keeping their hostility under wraps we didn't know or even suspect that we were walking straight into a trap until we were almost at the door of Wendel's office on the second floor of the plant. If you're the head of a big power combine, and shrewd, as Wendel unquestionably was, and there's a threat to your survival coming straight toward you along an echoing corridor and you want to be sure in advance he'll be a broken man when you talk with him in strict privacy, with the chips scattered widely and the game almost at an end--you'll either take care of it yourself, or assign just one man you can trust to do the job for you. Not a dozen men--or half a dozen--but just one. It's more efficient that way, more certain, the right way to go about it. I had no way of knowing that, of course, no way of looking through a wall at Wendel standing motionless or possibly seated in a chair, his eyes gleaming triumphantly, as we approached the door of his office, with just one guard walking a few paces behind us. Except that--deep in my mind the alarm bells were ringing again. They were ringing, all right, but very, very faintly and I don't know to this day what made me turn my head and look behind me just as he was whipping out the heavy metal thong. I caught only the barest glimpse of the thong gleaming in the corridor light. But even if he'd kept it concealed for a few seconds longer his face would have given him away. His eyes were blazing with a savage enmity, and he started for me the instant he realized that I had been forewarned.