to the cover of the side wall, and watched for the
other men. The first one had got too near; Rynason hadn't realized how
easily they could approach in this near-darkness. He felt the numbness
of the stunnerbeam spreading nearly to his shoulder; his left arm was
useless. Cursing, he trained the disintegrator along the line of the
steps and fired.

The disintegrator cut through the stone as though it were putty, for a
range of twenty feet. Rynason played the beam back and forth along the
steps, cutting them down to a smooth ramp which the attackers would have
to climb before they could get to him.

One of them tried to leap the last few levels before Rynason could cut
them, but he sliced the man in two through the chest. The separate parts
of the man's body fell and rolled back to the untouched levels below. He
had not had time to utter even a cry of pain.

For a time, now, there was complete silence in the wind. Rynason could
see the inert legs of the last attacker projecting out over the edge of
the third level down, and undoubtedly the others saw them too. They were
hesitating now, unsure of themselves. Rynason stayed pressed to the
stone floor, waiting. The wind whipped in a rising moan through the
upper reaches of the building.

Another of the men slipped over the edge of the massive stairs, hugging
the deeper darkness at the side of the stair-wall, and slowly inched his
way up the newly-flattened ramp. Rynason watched him coldly, through a
grey haze of fury which was yet tinged with despair. What use was all
this, the killing, the blood and sweat and pain? It disgusted him--yet
by its perverse senselessness it angered him too.

He cut a swathe through the crawling man, through head and neck and
back. A gory shell-like hulk slid back to the foot of the ramp.

And abruptly the remaining men broke and ran. One of them rose and
stumbled down the steep levels of the stairs, heedless of his exposure;
with a shock, Rynason saw that it was Rene Malhomme. Another followed
... and another. There were almost a dozen of them on the stairs; they
all broke and ran. Rynason sent one beam after them, biting a depression
into the rock wall beside them. Then they were gone.

Rynason moved back from the head of the stairs and leaned wearily
against the stone. His left arm was beginning to tingle with returning
circulation now; he rubbed it absently with his good hand and wondered
if they would try the sheer walls on the other