drop.

I whirled to dig the other guy in the room just as the throb of a stun-gun
beam moaned over my head. I wondered where they'd got the arsenal, dug the
serial number, and realized that it was mine. It gave me a chuckle. I'm a
pistol man, so the stun-gun that old gorilla-man was toting couldn't have
had more than one more charge. I tried to dig it but couldn't. Even a
Doctor Of Perception can't really dig the number of kilo-watt-seconds in a
meson chamber.

My accurate esping must have made the other guy desperate, because he made
a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across
over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn't, just as
the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my
stun-gun coming out of the bedroom door in front of Martha Franklin.

The slug intended for Martha's body never came out of my gun because her
stun-gun got to me first. It froze me like a hunk of Greek statuary and I
went forward and toppled over until I came on a three-point landing of
elbow, the opposite knee, and the side of my face.

I was as good as dead.

My brain was still functioning but nothing else was. I was completely
paralyzed. My heart had stopped breathing and my lungs had stopped
breathing, and I've been told that a healthy man can retain consciousness
for maybe a minute or so without a fresh supply of blood to the brain.
Then things get muddy black and you've had it for good. My esp was still
functioning, but that would black out with the rest of Steve Hammond.

There was no physical pain. They could have drilled me with a blunt
two-by-four and I'd not have felt it.

Then because I couldn't stare Death in the face, I shut my mind on the
fact and esped my late girl friend. She was standing there with my
stun-gun in her hand with a smile on her beautiful puss and that vibrant
body swaying gently. I wanted to vomit and I would have if I'd not been
frozen solid. That beautiful body presided over by that vicious brain made
me sick.

Her smile faded as I began to realize the truth. Her story was thin.
Rambaugh, a mental, would have been able to play his blackmail game to the
fine degree; he would have known when Martha's patience was about to grow
short--if Martha's story were true. No blackmailer pushed his victim to
the breaking point. And Rambaugh wouldn't have gone for me if this had
just been a plain case of blackmail.

No, by thinking deeply, Mart