hoped United had taken Ann to one of the other
sectors. Rescue would be easy. An experienced spaceman could out-talk,
out-maneuver, and out-fight an entire hinterland battalion.

Max Hunter took an autojet from the Roost to Mrs. Ames' residential
apartment. Conservation of his capital no longer counted, but time
did. If United had Ann's patent, Ann herself was expendable. Hunter
had to make his move to save her before they knew what he was up to.
It would be a difficult deal to pull off in the capital city, where
operatives of both cartels swarmed everywhere.

He left his blaster in his hotel room, to avoid an interrogation at
any other metro-entry. Mrs. Ames' apartment residence was one place in
the city where he had no need to go armed.

Just outside center-city a single street of twentieth century houses,
sheltered by the Palos Verdes Hills, had survived the devastation of
the last war. In the beginning the street had been preserved as a
museum piece while the cartel city had grown up around it. But with
each passing generation, popular interest had waned. Eventually the
houses had been sold.

One was now operated by a religious cult. Two were enormously
profitable party houses, where clients masqueraded in the amusing
twentieth century costumes and passed a few short hours living with
the quaint inconveniences of the past. The game had become so
attractive that reservations were booked months in advance. The fourth
relic remained unsold, slowly falling into ruin. The fifth belonged to
Mrs. Ames.

To satisfy a whim--originally it was no more than that, Mrs. Ames had
assured Hunter many times--she had asked her husband to buy it for her
some fifty years ago. After a space-liner accident left her a widow at
thirty-five, she had moved into the house as a means of
psychologically withdrawing from her grief.

She never left it again. She found the old house an island in time, a
magic escape from the chaos of her world.

She took in four residents because she needed their credits to augment
the income from her husband's estate, and the house was then
officially listed as an apartment. Chance worked her a miracle--or
perhaps the house did possess a magic of its own--for the residents
were as charmed by its inconveniences as Mrs. Ames had been. Ann
wouldn't consider living anywhere else, although the house was more
than a mile from her university. Even Hunter felt the indefinable
spell, when he was in from a flight