ad lifted. Decision crystalized within him. He would
be no use to anyone with a broken leg, a crushed foot, an eye knocked
out, seared lungs--and Casimir was FBI, she might be able to do
something at this end in spite of all.

He tested the straps. A quarter inch of leatherite--he could snap them
but would he break his bones doing it?

_Only one way to find out_, he thought bleakly.

"I'll get a blowtorch," said one of the guards in the rear of the
room. His face was wholly impassive. Most of these goons must be
moronic, thought Dalgetty. Most of the guards in the twentieth-century
extermination camps had been. No inconvenient empathy with the human
flesh they broke and flayed and burned.

He gathered himself. This time it was rage, a cloud of fury rising in
his mind, a ragged red haze across his vision. That they would _dare_!

He snarled as the strength surged up in him. He didn't even feel the
straps as they popped across. The same movement hurtled him across the
room toward the door.

Someone yelled. A guard leaped in his path, a giant of a man.
Dalgetty's fist sprang before him, there was a cracking sound and the
goon's head snapped back against his own spine. Dalgetty was already
past him. The door was shut in his face. Wood crashed as he went
through it.

A bullet wailed after him. He dodged down the corridor, up the nearest
steps, the walls blurred with his own speed. Another slug smacked into
the paneling beside him. He rounded a corner, saw a window and covered
his eyes with an arm as he leaped.

The plastic was tough but a hundred and seventy pounds hit it at
fifteen feet per second. Dalgetty went through!

Sunlight flamed in his eyes as he hit the ground. Rolling over and
bouncing to his feet he set out across lawn and garden. As he ran his
vision swept the landscape. In that state of fear and wrath he could
not command much thought but his memory stored the data for
re-examination.

V

The house was a rambling two-story affair, all curves and planes
between palm trees, the island sloping swiftly from its front to a
beach and dock. On one side was the airfield, on another the guard
barracks. To the rear, in the direction of Dalgetty's movement, the
ground became rough and wild, stones and sand and saw-grass and clumps
of palmettos, climbing upward for a good two miles. On every side, he
could see the infinite blue sparkle of ocean. Where could he hide?

He didn't notice the slashing blades