In the distance he heard the hunters' voices, strained by the intervening trees into the thin cries of children at play. Hendley, a red marker taped to the back of his uniform to identify him as the target, had been given a five-minute start. The gap had closed. The hunters could crash and blunder through the underbrush, careless of noise, while he must slink in silence. "No weapons," one of them had told him, grinning. "You don't need to worry about that. We really have to catch you." No weapons. But with a shudder Hendley remembered a scene in a newsview film, not understood at the time, in which a group of Freemen had swarmed upon a single fleeing figure. And he remembered a glimpse of that lone figure lying afterward on the grass, motionless, as if he were asleep. No weapons. Only hands and feet.... He had no idea how many of them there were. In the open near the edge of the woods they had been a numberless mass, a restless, eager horde of hunters, impatient for the pursuit to begin, fanning out to blanket a ridge with their white uniforms. He'd heard their excited mutter, like a single animal growl, as he plunged into the line of trees. He'd looked back once, and they had seemed to surge toward him, straining against an unseen leash. He paused, trying to place his position. Fortunately he had spent an afternoon in the woods planning his aborted attempt to scale the outside wall. He knew roughly where he was and where the main paths were that would represent added danger. He analyzed his situation. Leaving the woods would be foolhardy. Of a certainty there would be sentries posted along the fringes, and in the open he could easily be seen for some distance even in the darkness. The cover of the narrow belt of trees and undergrowth was his only protection. He had to stay ahead of the hunters--or hide--for less than an hour. Was the sky already graying? Through the tangle of leaf and branch above he could not be sure. Could he go overhead, flatten out against a tree trunk as high above the ground as possible? It might work. But if he were detected there, he would be trapped. They could shake him loose at their pleasure. Pleasure! The irony twisted his lips in a bitter smile. There were thickly clustered bushes where a fugitive might easily escape normal detection. But the hunters would be expecting this. The natural screens and covers would be closely searched.