“Yeah, but which is it?” Dar muttered. He glanced up and saw a blimp of a shopkeeper leaning against his storefront. Dar stepped up to him, pointing an accusing finger and snapping, “Which is it, citizen? How can you get away with this? Don’t you have any police here?”

“Sir!” The shopkeeper drew himself up, offended. “I’ll thank you not to discuss such disgusting issues!” And he wheeled about majestically, slamming his door behind him.

“I’m not so squeamish,” said an oily voice.

Dar and Sam looked up and saw a hunched old man with a lascivious grin, peering out from the shop next door. He was obscenely slender. “What’s your perversion, younglings? Plato? Descartes? Machiavelli? I’ve got ‘em all in here, all the banned books! Come in and read anything—just fifty BTUs an hour!”

“Let’s go,” Sam hissed. “I don’t like the way your jaw is setting!”

“All right, all right,” Dar growled. He turned away toward the end of the arcade, and bumped into someone. “Oh, excuse me …” He broke off, staring into a face like a rat’s above a short, lean body.

The little man stared back at him, eyes widening in shock and horror. Then his mouth opened in a moan that turned into a scream, and he slumped to the ground, clutching his chest.

“What happened?” Dar bleated, staring at the bright redness spreading over the man’s tunic from under his hands.

“Murder, I’d say.”

Dar’s head snapped up; he found himself staring into a very familiar beefy face, above an even more familiar breast-patch badge.

“You’re under arrest.” There was another one like him on the other side of Sam. “Just hold out your wrists, now …” He produced a length of cable that glowed, even in daylight.

“Uh, no thanks.” Dar stepped backward; he’d worn a manacle-loop before, on his way to Wolmar. Once around his wrists, the cable would virtually meld with his skin, and his wrists would stick together as though they’d grown that way. “Actually, I have an appointment at the confectionary shop, you see …”

“Well, I’m afraid we’ve got one that’s a little more important. Come on now, let’s not make a scene.” The policeman stepped forward. Sam backed away as the shopkeeper hefted an electroclub and snapped it down against the officer’s occiput. He slumped to the ground with a muted sigh as two lean and muscular types materialized out of adjacent doorways to zap the other policeman and take their places.

“Bit of a lucky thing for you we happened along,” the shopkeeper observed. “From what I read on the newsfax, all the cops in Haskerville’re out hunting you two. Now, if I was you, I’d be wanting a nice, safe bolthole to bolt into, and lock behind me.”

“Good idea,” Dar agreed. “But, personally, I go along with the idea that says the more you move around, the harder you are to find.”

“I was afraid you’d make this difficult,” the shopkeeper sighed. He nodded to the two gorillas. “Move ‘em around, boys.”

Huge arms seized Dar from behind, hoisting him off the ground and carrying him toward the open air. Beside him, Sam cursed and swore, trying to kick a shin with her heels, and missing every time.

As the toughs bundled them into a waiting car, Dar observed, “I think the cops were the better choice.”

The sign said, “You are now leaving HASKERVILLE.”

He turned to the tough who shared the back seat with them. “You must work for somebody important, to rate a car.”

“Might be,” the man said shortly. “Ain’t so much, though.”

“Well, no—it goes on wheels, not an air cushion. But it’s still more than most folks have here. Must cost a fortune—all that metal in the engine.”

“Metal?” The man frowned. “Where’d you grow up—on Orehouse?”

“They’re doing such marvelous things with synthetics these days,” Sam murmured.

“Sure, plastic,” the driver confirmed. “Polythermothane. Takes all the heat we need to give it, an’ more.”

“Well, I suppose—for a turbine.” Dar frowned. “Maybe even for a boiler. But how do you shield the fissionables?”

“ ‘E is from Orehouse,” the first tough snorted. “Fissionables’re metal, lunk. How’d we get ‘em ‘ere?”

“Yeah, I suppose it would be a little heavy on the import price.” Dar scratched his head. “So what do you use for an energy source?”

“Methane.”

“Methane?” Sam cried, scandalized. “Chemicals?”

“Uh—I hate to butt in.” Dar glommed onto the tough’s arm with a mastiff-grip. “But, could you say a word to your friend? We’re running right into a mountainside!”

The granite outcrop towered over them, rushing down on them.

The tough nodded. “Close enough, Rog.”

Rog pushed a button set into the dashboard, and the scrub at the base of the cliff swung outward and upward, revealing a huge gaping cave-mouth.

“Just a bit o’ camouflage,” the backseat tough explained. “Can’t leave yer front door open fer just any Tom, Dick, or Paddy t’ walk in, y’ know.”

“No, definitely not.” Dar’s eyes fairly bulged out of his head as the car swept into the cave, and a line of glow-plates lit up along the length of the walls, lighting their way onward. The floor sloped away in front of them, spiraling down at a thirty-degree angle. Rog held the car to a continuing hairpin turn, slowing down only as much as was absolutely necessary. Sam swung over against Dar and stayed there, which would’ve been very pleasant, if Dar hadn’t had to keep fighting to hold himself away from the backseat tough, who might not have understood, especially since that was his gun-hand.

The ramp leveled off and the car straightened out, but Sam stayed over against Dar. He counted it a hopeful sign, but was no longer sure he cared, now that he’d seen Lona.

The tunnel flared out into a huge cavern. Brilliant glow-plates spread a cold greenish light over alleyways between towering gray plastrete slabs.

“I’d almost think those were buildings,” Dar said, in hushed tones, “if they had windows.”

“They are buildings,” the tough affirmed. “What’d y’ need windows for, down ‘ere? Whacher gonna look at?”

Rog pulled the car into a slot between a small van and another car. They got out, and found themselves surrounded by a fleet of trucks and vans, parked in very orderly rows.

“Yes,” Dar mused, “your boss isn’t exactly hurting, is he?”

“Ask ‘im,” the tough invited. “Y’ve got an appointment—immediate.”

The door slid aside, and they stepped into a leather-and-mahogany office with a rug as thick as graft.

“Citizens Dar Mandra and Sam Bine,” said the bald man behind the acre of desktop, almost lost in the vast swivel chair. “Come in.”

They came in slowly, feeling as though there were guns pointed at their backs from all angles. Ridiculous, of course; the guns were probably aimed from the front.

“Sit.” It was an order, not an invitation. Under the circumstances, Dar wasn’t disposed to argue. He sat at the lefthand corner of the desk; Sam sat at the right. That’s where the chairs were. They didn’t look as though they’d move.

“What is this—our invitation to join the Underground?” Dar joked, with a tight smile.

It died under the look the little man gave him. Did he always have to make the right guess at the wrong time?

Their host wasn’t tall, but he was very broad across the shoulders and chest—and not fat. In fact, he was very hard, in the flesh—and, from the look of him, in the soul, too. He wore a quiet brown business tunic with a muted yellow ascot—conservative, punctiliously correct, with the look of a very high price. His nails were manicured, and his eyes were hidden behind brown lenses.

“You’re in the House of Houses,” he grated.

Dar stiffened and tried to keep his face immobile. Even buried on a prison planet, he’d heard of the I.D.E.’s biggest organized crime ring.