tried to find out? "Top level," she had
said. "That's logical." Why logical? Logical to whom? Did she know
where he was going and why?

The autojet thudded on the casino flat. A female attendant, robed in a
skin-colored sheath bright with amber jewels, held open the cab door
for him. Hunter entered the nearest casino. At the door he showed his
saving record in the Solar First National Fund, and a casino teller
issued him a ten thousand credit limit, the smallest denomination
available. The resorts weren't wasting effort on pikers.

Although the casinos everywhere in the system were popular with
spacemen, Hunter had never been to the top level before because Ann
had seen to it that his surplus credits went into their savings.

It was Hunter's opinion that he hadn't missed much. The Los Angeles
resorts duplicated, on an elaborate scale, the most unsavory
establishments of the frontier. Anything which by any stretch of a
perverted imagination could be defined as entertainment was
available--at a price.

It was early and the crowd was still small. It consisted of spacemen
on the usual furlough binge, a handful of suburbanites who had
hoarded a half-year's savings for this one-night fling in the big
resorts, and a dozen bright-faced executives from the lower levels of
the cartel hierarchy. The big brass would turn up later on, at a more
fashionable hour.

At all costs, Hunter had to keep himself inconspicuous. His uniform
was not entirely out of place, although Consolidated did issue its
commanders a formal outfit--more gold braid, a jeweled insignia, and a
jacket cut to emphasize the broad shoulders.

Hunter stopped at the snack bar and wolfed a plate of cold cuts, the
first food he had eaten since morning. Then he moved indirectly across
the pillared gambling pavilion, pausing at two tables to place bets.
His objective was to find a vantage point in the upper floor of the
casino where he could observe the geographic layout of the top level.

He slipped quickly into the dark well of an emergency stairway,
feeling reasonably sure that no one had seen him leave the game room.
More than half an hour had passed since he had fled Mrs. Ames' rooming
house and he was convinced that very shortly--if they had not done so
already--the police would put out a general alarm.

As a matter of course, there would be inquiries at the top level, but
at first they would be made by police mercenaries. No one in the
casino had any rea