Ed felt the whir of the air-filtering apparatus in the room and smiled. And there was a television globe nearby. Ed could have found ways, now, to make his own tiny voice audible to his enemy and to challenge him. But Ed decided against this for the present. He mustn't waste precious time, yet he suspected that he could depend on the restlessness of a nervous foe not to wait here quietly very long. Again he was right. Perched on a ledge made by an irregularity of the wall, Ed waited less than five minutes before Carter Loman jumped up from the bed, cursed, and dashed from the room. Ed's Midas Touch cylinder reddened in his hand as he jetted after him. Of firmer flesh than other men, Loman hurried untiring, even in his massive armor and plastic helmet, down a back stairs, passing a hundred levels. Then he was in a small, powerful car racing along a civic speedway that Ed remembered well. Clinging to plush that was like a dense forest under him, Ed remained undislodged by the tornadoes of air that came from speed. Around him passed beauty that he used to know, expanded so enormously that much of the familiar mood of it was lost; and he himself seemed cut off from it, like a ghost coming back. But there was other, perhaps greater beauty, too--closer to the heart of what he was now. There'd been a controlled shower induced by the weather towers. Now the sun shone again, and the air sparkled, not with dust, but with countless tiny droplets of moisture--crystal globes, clear as lenses, but breaking the sunshine into brilliant prismatic hues. Ed's brief rambling of mind ended when Loman did an odd thing. He stopped in Ed's old neighborhood, after having passed a half-dozen road blocks where uniformed men had entrenched themselves, covering their ugly vehicles with cut branches. Loman had only flashed his Interworld Security badge at each post, to receive respectful permission to go on. Loman stopped his car abruptly before a house adjacent to Ed's own--one Ed knew well. But Ed had an odd feeling that this was not as strange as it seemed. This suburb, close to the City, harbored many of the noted and notorious. Besides, many recent turbulent events had been centered within these few hundred square miles. And Loman had been in the neighborhood before, in the company of Police Chief Bronson. Also, had there always been something disturbingly familiar about Loman's manner? Ed tingled at the unraveling of an enigma, as Loman hurried up the walk to the house. Loman found the door locked, but if this annoyed him, it stopped him not at all. An armored shoulder, backed up by the muscles of his kind--their power rarely demonstrated publicly--battered the door to splinters and Loman stepped through. Ed followed him--as unobtrusive as part of the atmosphere--up a stairway and into a pleasant student room seen in colossal scale.