* * * * *

Three ragged men sat laughing on a bench, and a girl handed him a small
gun. "Luck," she said. "I hope you know how to use this." Barrent nodded
his thanks before he noticed that the girl was not Moera; she was the
skrenning mutant who had predicted his death. Still, he moved into the
street and faced the three Hadjis.

Two of the men were mild-faced strangers. The third, Barrent-1,
stepped forward and quickly brought his gun into firing position.
Barrent-2 flung himself to the ground and pressed the trigger of his
unfamiliar weapon. He felt it vibrate in his hand and saw Hadji
Barrent's head and shoulders turn black and begin to crumble. Before he
could take aim again, his gun was wrenched violently from his hand.
Barrent-1's dying shot had creased the end of the muzzle.

Desperately he dived for the weapon, and as he rolled toward it he saw
the second man, now wearing the Barrent-1 face, take careful aim.
Barrent-2 felt pain flash through his arm, already torn by the
trichomotred's teeth. He managed to shoot this Barrent-1, and through
a haze of pain faced the third man, now also Barrent-1. His arm was
stiffening rapidly, but he forced himself to press the trigger....

* * * * *

_You're playing their game_, Barrent-2 told himself. The
death-conditioning will wear you down, will kill you. _You must see
through it, get past it. It isn't really happening, it's in your
mind_....

But there was no time to think. He was in a large, circular,
high-ceilinged room of stone in the cellars of the Department of
Justice. It was the Trial by Ordeal. Rolling across the floor toward him
was a glistening black machine shaped like a half-sphere, standing
almost four feet high. It came at him, and in the pattern of red, green,
and amber lights he could see the hated face of Barrent-1.

Now his enemy was in its ultimate form: the invariant robot
consciousness, as false and stylized as the conditioned dreams of Earth.
The Barrent-1 machine extruded a single slender tentacle with a white
light winking at the end of it. As it approached, the tentacle withdrew,
and in its place appeared a jointed metal arm ending in a knife-edge.
Barrent-2 dodged, and heard the knife scrape against the stone.

_It isn't what you think it is_, Barrent-2 told himself. _It isn't a
machine, and you are not back on Omega. This is only half of yourself
you are fighting, this is no