rms had burst into sound too quickly. Had the girl set the police
on him, waiting only long enough to make sure he would accomplish his
mission?

Whatever he had been set to kill, had not been human. Not a man.
Intuitively, Newlin realized that the girl had anticipated everything.
She knew what would happen, he reflected bitterly. She had promised
payment only on delivery of a corpse, when there could be no corpse.

Spud Newlin, Sucker No. 1.

Conscience did not trouble him. After all, the man--or the thing--had
fired first, without warning, without waiting to hear him out. Without
waiting for details like identity, or even asking to hear the message he
brought. It was self-defense, in a peculiar way.

* * * * *

Newlin ran and tried to lose himself in the shadowy fastness of Monta
Park. He was not surprised that the girl had not troubled to wait and
meet him.

He was not even angry. It was part of the game.

The Protection Police radios were carrying the alarm. Soon the Security
Police would take up the hunt. If the girl had turned him in, she would
be able to give a detailed and accurate description. Newlin guessed that
he would be lucky to last even the few hours till daylight--or what
passes for daylight on cloud-shrouded Venus.

Long before then, his career might end suddenly in a wild network of
blaster or heat beams. By dawn he would very likely be crumpled among
the ashcans and refuse in any dark alley.

But still the city would be his best bet. No use beating his way to the
spaceport landing stages. Space Patrol units must have been notified,
and would already be searching all outgoing units.

For the moment, he had a brief interval of grace in which to think
things over and try, if only for his own satisfaction, to figure out
what had happened. It--whatever it was--had writhed hideously when the
blaster beam drove home. Part of it vaporized instantly, and the organs
revealed did not even look animal. Eery, geometric, but not the naked
electronic symmetries of a mechanical robot. Not metal. But what?
Collapsed like wet sacking, it had lain half-inside and half-outside the
screen. He could not recall clearly its rapid mutations of form after
that.

Did it matter? The alarms were out. Blaring metallic clangor, and the
uncanny banshee wailing of the hunting sirens. Police care little who is
murdered in the nameless dives of Venusport, but let one of the lordly
rich men