to be
swift, direct, unseen, unheard.

He was able to make it so. Pointing the direction rod, he winged
forward until directly above an estimated spot, then dropped a
thousand feet. A pause while he searched; another drop. He knew
Kurgo's house well, but the scene was confusing from above, and the
street the house was on was always dark at night.

He made it out at last. The squat two-storied structure, similar to
other merchants' strongholds, seemed unlit and unwatched. Carse swung
back the hinged mittens of the suit and slid his hands out ready for
action. In his left he took his ray-gun; then, pressing the
mitten-switch, he dropped straight, silent, swift, like the Hawk he
now truly was.

* * * * *

A single window-port, high up, broke the smooth rear of Kurgo's house.
It faced a silent alleyway. The steel shutters were closed, but a pull
swung them noiselessly outward. For a brief moment Carse's bulging
giant's figure of metal and fabric hung black against the shadowed
window-port. The room he peered into was solid black. He heard no
sound. Clumsily he thrust out and stepped in.

Silence. Inky nothingness--but the air was weighted with many things,
and among them one which brought the short hairs on the Hawk's neck
prickling erect. A smell! It was not to be mistaken--a faint, but rank
and fetid and altogether identifying smell--the body-smell of a
Venusian!

For a moment Hawk Carse's breathing stopped. Metal clanked on metal
for an instant as he moved from the window-port and became one with
the darkness inside; then silence again, as his eyes trained into the
vault and his hand held ready on the ray-gun. He waited.

Was it a trap? He had seen no guards watching the house; had sensed it
deserted. But the steep shutters, unlocked, readily permitting
entrance--and the smell! Even if not still there, a Venusian had been
in the room, and a Venusian of Port o' Porno was an enemy. A
Venusian.... There were only some sixty on the whole satellite, and,
of these, fifty were the men of Lar Tantril. Lar Tantril, powerful
henchman of Dr. Ku Sui, director of the Eurasian's drug trade on
Satellite III. But that line of thought had to wait.

"I see you!" he whispered suddenly and sharply. "My gun's on you. Come
forward!"

* * * * *

No answer; not the slightest sign or stir in the darkness. He breathed
again.

Carse knew the arrangement of Kurgo's house