off
the elevator. He could see Room 1212, three doors down the corridor,
twenty steps--and then the blindfold was on. From now on he worked in
the dark.

He felt the skeleton key in his palm and flipped the shield off for a
second; then the key was in the lock, the shield back on, protecting
him. The door opened slowly.

He heard it shut behind him. Then there was silence. He drew his gun.

"Go ahead," a muffled voice said from his right. "Go ahead and try
something, Fredericks."

He whirled and almost fired--but voices could be thrown. He listened
again. There was silence ... not quite silence ... a movement ... a
rustle--

Breathing was faint but unmistakable. It gave him a new direction.
Breathing couldn't be faked.

He pictured the Psi Operative, in one flash of imagination, trying to
get through the shield, sweating as he strained helplessly against the
force shield, the binder field, the mask, the blindfold--oh, there was
no way out for the poor superman, no way at all.

And Psi Operatives didn't carry weapons or anything else. They
depended on their powers, and that was all.

And he'd neutralized those powers.

The breathing gave him the direction. He turned again, bringing the
gun up, and fired six shots without a second's break between them.
There was a sound like a gasp, and then nothing.

Nothing at all.

Grinning wildly, Fredericks whipped off the blindfold and switched off
his shield in one triumphant motion. There, on the floor--

There, on the floor, was a nice gray rug with nobody at all lying dead
on top of it. In the half-second it took Fredericks to see that, the
Psi Operative moved. Fredericks tossed the empty gun at him and
missed; the man was coming too fast. He guarded his face but the Psi
Operative didn't go for the face. Instead his hands went swinging up
and out and _back_.

The sides of the palms landed neatly on the twin junctions of
Fredericks' arms and shoulders. Fredericks let out a shriek as his
arms turned to acutely painful stone, and the Psi Operative stepped
back and moved again in one blinding motion. This time the solar
plexus was the target for one balled fist.

And then, of course, it was all over.

* * * * *

"Of course it was simple," Donegan said. "Anyone could have thought of
it--and I knew you would."

"All the same," the Psi Operative said, "I nearly didn't."

Donegan nodded. "If you hadn't," he said, "we'd stationed a