"That's sunset," she said. "And there won't be anyone there?"

"Nobody. They dive for home."

"Now listen carefully. We're taking you there to get the duplicates of those Royal proclamations. If you even so much as quiver, We'll break your legs. Understood?"

I nodded, careful not to look eager. This was going exactly per my plan.

She had a marine electric dagger in her hand. She put the satchel of my records over my head. That was what I wanted, too.

"When we've got those proclamations," she said, "we are delivering you to the Royal prison. Remember that I did not give my word that you would arrive there alive. The price is your cooperation in delivering those documents."

"You'd kill me?" I said.

"After your trying to murder Jettero? I saw it, remember. You don't deserve a trial. So do you go along quietly and help? Or do I find out right here how effective this electric dagger is?"

She had it on. I could hear it whirr. But I tried to hide a smile. She was playing the game exactly as I wished.

She prodded me down the ladder. I went the sixty feet to the ground and two Fleet marines took hold of me and marched me roughly to the civilian car. The driver was a marine and beside him sat another, holding a needle handgun pointed straight at me. I got in the back. Heller sat on one side of me, Krak on the other. Heller waved to Crup and we vaulted into the sky. All Voltar spread out below in the waning sun. We passed around the main Fleet base and began to mingle with the sky traffic. The driver was identifying us with his own identoplate, just another bunch of marines going on liberty. As we approached Government City we bucked the outgoing evening traffic. The River Well wound a golden track around the cliffs where the offices of Section 451 perched in decay.

Then qualms began to hit me. I was as tense as a string about to break. Could I pull this thing off? My life depended upon it and so did Heller's death. If it didn't work, they would deliver me to the Royal prison. That was the province of the Justiciary of Voltar and not even Lombar could tamper with the decisions of those grim judges. In the Domestic Police prisons, the Apparatus could spirit away criminals after they had been sentenced, but not the Royal prison. Stern tradition guided the justiciary there, for it housed only the most notorious criminals, those with crimes against the state. If they locked me in there under charges, not even Lombar could get me out.

This was a very risky thing.

Lombar had better appreciate all the dangers I was suffering on his behalf. We came in slowly, making sure that the office was now closed. Old Bawtch, the chief clerk there, was dead. I had ordered him killed along with the two forgers. So there was no risk that they would be around to expose the invalidity of what we had come to pick up.

It was dusk. "Looks like they've all gone home," the marine driver said.

"Go ahead and land," said Heller.

The driver chose a place between two parked airbuses and killed the engine. Heller got out and looked around. There was nobody in sight. The building was locked. He was carrying a shoulder kit bag and he got out an instrument. He went up and down the wall tubing with it. He located what I knew to be the central communications conduit of the place. With two suction cups he fixed a field coil over the area. It would give the circuits the appearance of still being alive. No alarm would trigger.

Then, with a pair of snips, he cut the conduit apart. No alarm would go off and nobody could make a call out of that building now.

I was praying soundlessly to every God I knew that my trick would work.

Heller beckoned to the two marines. They already had guns pointed at me. "This is the prisoner's office. We are going in here to collect some papers. But he also might get the idea of laying his hand on a weapon. This is also Apparatus territory and he might get the idea his friends will rescue him before we can get him to the Royal prison. So at his first suspicious move, shoot to stun."

Heller motioned to me and I pushed my identoplate against the lock.

Inside, the place was its old, musty, dark, cluttery self, redolent with what sarcastic people are prone to call "drunk stink." I had no time to look around: under the prod of guns, I went through to my old office in the back. Heller set a lamp down on a side table. Nothing had changed: dust was thick; there was even an empty hot-jolt can just where I had left it so long ago. Oh, office of bitter memory and pain, office of nightmares and overwork, office of travail—I had not missed it even a little bit.

My private toilet door was closed.

"Well, where are they?" said the Countess Krak.

Of course, there were no duplicates of those Royal forgeries. I said, "Oh, don't think I am unwilling to cooperate. I am just trying to remember exactly which floorboard I have to lift." It really didn't matter which one I addressed first: there was ample blackmail material under each and every separate one of them, for I had been collecting career data for all my years in the Apparatus. It's the only way one could get along and get his way. I managed to look a little distracted. I gripped my lower abdomen and made a face. Then I started to bend over to lift a board. I got it partially up. One could see there were papers under it. I dropped it. "No, that's not the one. I don't want to tear the whole place up ..." I grimaced harder. "If I only didn't have my mind on having to go to the toilet. . ."

"What?" said Heller.

"I've got diarrhea," I said. "It's the increase of gravity. A spacer like you wouldn't notice it, but weighing one-fifth more now has got my system upset. If you let me go to the toilet, maybe I could concentrate." Holding my lower abdomen with one hand, I pointed at the toilet door with the other. Heller gestured to a marine. "Check it out."

The marine opened the toilet door, played a light around the place, grimacing at the cluttered stink. He shined the light at the window and went over close to it to look down at the River Weil flowing darkly five hundred vertical feet below. The window was the kind that seals and never opens. He came out. Rather hurried, to keep up the pretense, I went in. I looked back at the Countess Krak and closed the door.

Silently I slid the bolt shut.

Carefully I found the secret catch that opened the side wall. It worked smoothly and quietly. The ladder was there to the hatchway above.

I reverently thanked Bugs Bunny for the inspiration he had been in my life. The glass in the square window was silent-break. I hefted my bag of records. I swung it at the window.

There was not even a tinkle.

jagged edges that remained were very convincing.

I stepped back through the secret side wall and closed it behind me.

On silent feet I went up the ladder.

With hushed fingers I opened the upper hatch.

I stepped out into the starlight.

I closed the hatch behind me.

Without a sound, I crept over to an irregularity in the roof and crawled under the eave to be hidden from overfly view.

A ventilation pipe was close to hand that opened into the lower office, so I took my head well away from it.

I SHOUTED A DWINDLING SCREAM!

A silent second from below.

PANDEMONIUM!

The sound of someone trying to open the toilet door!

The crash of a gun butt against the lock!

The rip of a shattered bolt!

"HE'S GONE!"

The sound of a chair as it overturned. A rush of feet.

Then a voice, which was coming through the shattered window as somebody looked down: "That's hundreds of feet straight down!"

"Do you see a body?"

"Shall I call the river patrol?"

"Nothing can live in those rip currents."

"Do you see any sign of a ledge or a rope?" asked Heller.