oor beside the chair
in which she had gone to sleep.

She bent down, casually, and picked it up. She straightened, the little
instrument ready in her hand.

"This is not a cigaret lighter, but a heatgun," she said flatly. "I'm in
charge here, and I say Mr. Kensington is to be permitted to go free. If
any effort is made to stop him, I'll burn you down."

Both police heatguns swung up in short arcs and trained on her. The
burly policeman spoke gently.

"I'm sorry, Miss Cara Nome, but we're under orders from Mr. Eli, and we
intend to follow them," he said. "I'd hate to see you injured, but if
you blast either of us the other one will burn off your hand."

"No, Maya!" exclaimed Dark, getting to his feet. "Don't! There's no
point in your getting hurt for my sake."

She ignored him.

"Drop those heatguns, both of you, or I blast!" she snapped, almost
hysterically.

Then Dark hurled himself bodily at the two men.

The thin-faced man swung his heatgun around to meet Dark's charge. Maya
twisted the lighter-gun toward him, and at the same moment the burly
policeman threw himself against her. Her heat beam singed the thin-faced
one's shoulder, then she collapsed under the impact of the other's body.

As she fell, she saw the almost invisible beam of the thin-faced
policeman's heatgun strike Dark directly in the stomach, burning away
the cloth, burning a great gaping hole in his abdomen. Dark slid to the
floor, writhing, gasping, clutching his stomach.

Her lighter-gun knocked from her hand, Maya struggled, half-dazed, to
her feet. The burly policeman had swung his own gun on the prostrate
Dark, but the other one, grimacing with the pain of his wounded
shoulder, stopped him.

"Let him be," he said. "I like to watch them die."

With a wail, Maya dropped to Dark's side. She cradled his head against
her breast and sobbed as he died in her arms.

9

From the time she saw Dark Kensington die until Nuwell's arrival at the
Chateau Nectaris a day later, Maya remained in her room, half in shock,
half in an agony of sorrow and remorse.

She was so exhausted by her ordeal that she did sleep, but it was
fitfully and without genuine rest. She had her meals sent up to her
room, and ate automatically, not tasting the food.

Rationally, she could in no way blame herself for Dark's death, but that
did not prevent her feeling strongly that her insistence on tracking
down the fugitives from the Childress Barber College h