ked open the front door--and froze. Three men were waiting on
the porch with drawn blasters. Hunter had no time to recognize facial
features which it might have been to his advantage to remember later,
no time to find any identifying insignia on their tunics. With a
barely visible flickering fire arced from one of the weapons, and pain
exploded in his body, unconsciousness washed into his brain.

His first sensation when the paralysis began to wear off was the dull
ache of visceral nausea. He opened his eyes, and saw, bleakly
shadowed, the living room of the Ames house. It was after dark, which
could only mean that he had lain there nearly four hours. To knock him
out for that period of time, they must have given him a nearly lethal
charge from the blaster calculated just under the limit of physical
endurance.

His motor control and his sense of touch returned more slowly. For a
quarter of an hour he lay helpless in the chintz-covered rocker,
feeling nothing but a tingling, like pin-pricks of fire, in his arms
and legs.

He looked down and saw that he held a blaster in his hand--his own
blaster, which he had left in his room in the Roost. He did not yet
have the neural control to release his fingers from the firing dial.

As his sense of hearing was restored, he became aware that the Tri D
had been left on. The screen pictured the swirling confusion of a mob.
An announcer was describing the sudden outburst of labor violence
which had occurred in the industrial district that afternoon. Eric
Young's U.F.W. had gone on strike against a dozen separate plants.

Essential plants, naturally. Everything was always essential, and
government spokesmen always made pretty speeches deploring the
situation. It was a pattern familiar to Hunter for years. One of the
cartels would pay Young to strike factories belonging to the other.
Then a second bribe, paid by the struck cartel, bought off the strike.
Occasionally a sop of bonus credits had to be dished out to the
faithful.

It was not a maneuver either Consolidated or United used frequently,
because the advantage was transitory, and the only long-term winner
was Eric Young.

This time there was a slight variation in the formula. Young had
struck plants of both cartels. That puzzled Hunter, but any curiosity
he felt was subordinate to his disgust. How much longer would this
farce go on before it dawned on the rank and file of the U.F.W. that
Eric Young was playing them all fo