pered. "He hasn't moved?"

"No."

_Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead?_ Stanton thought. _If his heart had
stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody?
Especially me._

Ahead the tunnel made a curving turn, and there was a large area that had
once been a major junction of two tunnels, one below the other. The Nipe
had taken over a part of that area to build his home-away-from-home.

Stanton approached the turn and took off the infra-red goggles. Enough
light spilled over from the Nipe's lair to illuminate the tunnel. He put
the goggles on the trackway. He wouldn't need them again.

He went on around the curve, slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight
down here in the tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet.

Cautiously, he lifted himself up to the platform, where long-gone
passengers had once waited for long-gone trains. Now that he was out of
the trench that the tracks lay in, he could move more easily. He moved
away from the tracks.

"Barbell! He's heard you! Watch it!"

But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked off the
communicator and threw it away. He didn't want any encumbrances now.

And then, as fast as any express train that had ever moved in these
underground ways, the Nipe came around a corner thirty feet away, his four
violet eyes gleaming, his limbs rippling beneath his centipede-like body.

_From fifteen feet away, he launched himself through the air, his
outstretched hands ready to kill._

But Stanton's marvelous neuro-muscular system was already in action.

At this stage of the game, it would be suicide to let the Nipe get close.
He couldn't fend off eight grasping hands with his own two. He leaped to
one side, and the Nipe got his first surprise in ten years when Stanton's
fist slammed against the side of his snouted head, knocking him in the
opposite direction from that in which Stanton had moved.

The Nipe landed, turned, and charged back toward the man. This time, he
reared up, using his two rear pairs of limbs for locomotion, while the two
forward pair were held out, ready to kill.

He got surprise number two when Stanton's fist landed on his snout,
rocking his head back. His own hands met nothing but air, and by the time
he had recovered from the blow, Stanton was well back, out of the way.

_He's so small!_ Stanton thought wonderingly. Even when he reared up, the
Nipe's head was only three feet above the concrete floor.

T