Now its bolt tore loose. The door burst inward. One of Zenaor's men clawed past it, whipping up a weapon that might have been a pistol. The old serf threw himself upon the guardsman. Green fire blazed. The serf fell back. * * * * * Craig dropped from the window-sill into an alley. The haze of pain was clearing now. He could run again, though his right arm still trailed useless at his side. Desperate, a hunted thing, he plunged off down the passage. More cries behind him. More green fire blazing. But these ancient alleys were like a maze, a rabbit-warren. Given ten seconds' lead, a man had at least a gambler's chance to lose himself, find safety. And Craig had ten seconds ... ten seconds a grey-thatched serving serf had bought with his own life. The knowledge brought new sickness surging through Craig--a sickness that drew no fragment from the pain of his wounded shoulder. But he had no time for thoughts or bitterness or brooding. Not now. For him, there were only the shouts behind and the blackness of the alley. Only then, from his backtrail, a new sound rose ... the whisper of a roller's leathery pads spinning over the cobbles. Craig whirled. Running blind, caroming from wall to wall as it sped through the narrow alley, the sphere raced towards him. Craig threw himself into the angle of the nearest doorway. The sphere missed him by inches; hurtled on beyond. Sweating, shaking, Craig stepped out once more. But now the shouts came closer as guardsmen ran towards him, following up the roller. Pivoting, Craig stumbled on once more. Before he had taken a dozen steps, the whispering of the roller drifted to him. The sphere was hurtling back again. Panting, Craig wedged himself into the chimney-like shaft between two buildings. Again, the roller passed him. The guards' shouts echoed ever-louder. It dawned on Craig that the crevice in which he stood stretched upward, clear to a tiny wedge of emerald sky. At least, up there, there'd be no rollers. Wincing with pain at each movement of his wounded arm, bracing himself with feet on one wall, back against the other, he worked his way slowly up the shaft. The roller again. Guards below him now. Craig held his breath. But they passed on without an upward glance. Painfully, he worked his way still higher, till the emerald wedge widened into a shining vista. Then--of a sudden, it seemed--he was out on a flat, sagging roof, drinking in air in great, greedy gulps. In the same instant, a shout hammered at him. He whirled. A guard was running towards him across one of the nearby roofs. While he watched, another appeared, then another. Ring-like, they surrounded him, hemming him in with a circle of death. And him with no weapon but the rooftop rubble. Savagely, he cursed aloud--Zenaor, and Lysor, and the Federation, and his job, and duty, and the girl called Narla; baron and Baemae, Earth-worlds and aliens.