"They always follow it up with a verbal message," Liddell explained. "It usually only takes a few minutes. It--" "Here he comes!" Linda cried. Something was shimmering in the screen, pulsing, struggling to bridge the yawning chasm between the space which was not and the universe which was. It gradually took the shape of a man floating in an unexpectedly fetus-like position. "Lidd," Linda said. "We're getting over the sub-typer." "A message?" Liddell asked, only a small part of his mind concentrating on what Linda had said. The rest of his being was riveted on the transfer screen as the figure there floated closer, still shadowy, but the shadow darkening, solidifying, bridging.... "I'll read it to you as it comes. URGENT LUNA OUTWARD TO SUB-SPACE WAY STATION. JOHN SMITH ... that's strange. It's stopping." "It has to stop. Sub-space can take only a certain number of verbal units at a time. Give it a couple of seconds." "How's our John Smith?" "Still shimmering, but getting more solid all the time." "Here it comes again.... IS ESCAPED LUNA PRISON CONDEMNED KILLER JASON SHORT.... Oh God, Lidd!" There wasn't a station or budding colony in the galaxy which hadn't heard of Jason Short. His kind was a rarity in the twenty-first century, the strangely mal-adjusted, warped, sneering, conscienceless professional killer. Before his capture, Short had hired out to governments, to private firms, to individuals if they had sufficient capital--as a killer. On capture he had been condemned to death at the luna penal colony but the sentence had been delayed and postponed for several years--all the while Jason Short's notoriety growing--because sociologists and psychologists had insisted on studying Short exhaustively to see if they could prevent a recurrence of his mental sickness. And now all this, Liddell thought numbingly, had backfired. Now Jason Short had somehow managed to escape-- Was materializing here, a cold, ruthless killer. Liddell clawed at the blaster at his belt and brought it up and clear at the precise moment that Jason Short materialized fully in the screen. There was time for one wild shot, the raw energy searing into sub-space through the screen. Then Jason Short became a solid, bulky but swift-moving figure. He lunged at Liddell and they grappled for possession of the blaster. Linda screamed, but she might have been a hundred parsecs away in sub-space. For all his enormous size and heavily-muscled body, Jason Short moved with surprising swiftness. He used his right forearm like a club, smashing it against Liddell's jaw, stunning him. Liddell went down and Short came down on top of him and the two of them rolled over and over away from the screen, their wildly thrashing arms and legs bringing Linda down on top of them. All at once, Short rolled clear of Liddell. Struggling for breath, Liddell climbed to his feet, bringing the blaster to bear on the killer triumphantly. "Hold it!" Short cried.