"Even assuming you have a plan, sire, how will The Assassin get past the Security Guards to come here for the operation?" "That's his worry," Jeff retorted curtly. "Fight his way, bribe his way. He knows what he's doing." Already the young doctor's fingers were stiffening. He was painfully conscious of the aches in his legs and back from the long climb. His head hummed. He needed sleep. Not so good for a delicate operation. He shrugged and went back to his reading. * * * * * When The Assassin finally came, he came in style. Jeff heard the firing while the mountain men were still blocks away. Bursting in, bristling with sten guns, bomb throwers, dripping-beaked skars, they carried the old man in their midst like a sack of tubi. "The guard who is regularly stationed at the hill gate had been replaced by an idealist," the earless young man panted. "But the master has sent twenty men to the Coliseum to create a diversion that may give us a few hours." "Even under the best conditions this operation takes six hours," Jeff exclaimed. As Taen stripped off his filthy robes, The Assassin croaked: "It had better take much less. I have not that many men to throw away." He snarled as Taen in his haste nicked his blue-veined skull with the razor. And he muttered with senile detachment as he was swabbed with K2X, sheeted and strapped down upon the table. His black eye cavities turned with suspicion, as though they could see, when Jeff's damp hands squeaked into the rubber gloves. "May the gods lean over your shoulder, sire," Taen whispered. The two stepped into the glare of germicidal lamps, steel instruments, steel table, glinting knives of light, while the followers of the old man like dark crags lined the wall, a barrier to the door. "Hypo." The Assassin's breathing was as thunderous as the air blasting of a skar. "Crank down the variable reflection viewer." Desultory gunfire echoed through the dome city as Jeff focused the eyepiece until the scar tissue appeared like two black radishes extending into the gray blur of the forebrain. But when he increased the reflective depth the myelin covering of the optic chiasma glistened whitely. He exhaled with relief. There was still a gateway to the cerebrum. The Assassin's breathing subsided to a gentle whisper. "Scalpel." While the gunshots rattled closer, Jeff cored into the dead tissue with the apparent unconcern of a boy cutting out the eye of a potato. But when he reached tissue of a pinkish tinge he moved with infinite caution. The doctor was conscious of the huge cables of the efferent nerves that lay beneath his low-powered microscope and of the delicate two-fingered probe that moved among them, guided by control knobs rather than the coarse direct hand of man, testing, searching for life.