Spasmodically, he shoved at me with hands and feet alike--trying to break clear, striving to regain the inter-body space that gives a strega-man his advantage. For an instant I held him tight, then abruptly and without warning matched his efforts to thrust clear with similar of my own. As if spring-propelled, we bounced to opposite sides of the hall. Strega tactics said it was a time for maneuvering, regrouping, consolidation. Instead, scrambling on all fours, I rocketed down the corridor and away as fast as I could go. There were ramps, after that ... doors and archways ... more corridors. Then, at long last, the building entrance yawned ahead. Sobbing for breath, I raced towards it. Simultaneously, a knot of hurrying men appeared, crowding in from the street and blocking off the doorway. They were grouped about a bulky, familiar figure ... the figure of FedGov Interplanetary Security Controller Alfred Kruze. For me, it was a moment straight out of nightmare ... a lightning-flash of horror, lifted from one of those awful dreams in which you run and run and run only somehow your legs won't seem to work. Desperately, I tried to reverse direction. It was too late. I couldn't brake in time. * * * * * Someone yelled as I careened into the group. I glimpsed distended eyes, a startled face. Clawing, I tried to twist past the wall of bodies and slide out the door. I might have made it, then. But suddenly a bull-voice roared, "Hold him, rack you! Hold him!" Controller Kruze's voice. Like lightning, hands came at me from all directions. I rocked back--dazed by their blows; pinned tight against the wall. Another moment, and Kruze himself was towering over me. "So!" He hissed the word, as if his rage were too great for normal speech. "I've found you, have I, finally?" And then, turning abruptly: "Back to the warping-chamber with him! I'll deal with him no place short of the Interplanetary Center itself!" Now the hands that pinned me jerked me forward. Still panting, head still reeling, I found myself dragged out into the street. "Controller!" I choked. "Controller Kruze! Please! Listen to me--" "Don't worry! I'll listen! And so will a trial board, and all those fools in Psychogen!" "No!" I was shouting now; shouting and shaking. Though whether it was out of my own feeling or from the contagion of Kruze's rage, I couldn't say. "Do whatever you want with me. I don't care. But not now! I've laid the ground; everything's set up--" "No, rack you!"--This in a bellow.