Hosato shook his head, setting his glass down without drinking.

“I don’t know, Rick. It still sounds to me like you could get yourself in a lot of trouble. You’ve got a Mexican standoff between Maintenance and Security over who’s responsible for watching the manufacturing area. If anything goes wrong, someone’s going to get blamed, and from where I sit, that’ll be Maintenance.”

“Don’t worry about it,” his friend insisted. “Nothing major can go wrong, not the way it’s set up now. At best, a mechanical failure would be a nuisance. We’re just hoping there’ll be enough nuisances to prove our point.”

“How can you be that sure. I mean, surely there’s some point of vulnerability that could send things into a tailspin.”

“Let me tell you, Hayama. I’ve been working here for twelve years. I’ve seen almost everything imaginable go wrong at one time or another—the plumbing, the machines, the life-support systems everything. But I haven’t seen anything yet break down that couldn’t be fixed or replaced in minimal time, and that was before the modular system. I remember one time—”

A high beeping interrupted his oration. With a sigh he thumbed a button on the side of his belt pager and stood up.

“No rest for the wicked, I guess,” he grumbled, tossing down the last of his drink. Then he reached forward and punched the keyboard with practiced ease. “I’ll get this tab. Have one more on me, okay. I’ve got to run.”

Hosato smiled and waved as the maintenance man departed. As soon as he was out of sight, however, the smile dropped from his face like a mask.

The table bonged again as his fresh drink rose into view, but he didn’t even look at it. Instead, he stared intently at the far wall as he tried to organize his thoughts.

Well, Suzi, he thought, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that no one’s watching the manufacturing areas. The bad news is that, according to the maintenance crew, the production lines can’t be gimmicked.

That was their opinion. Hosato would have to be convinced. There was a big difference between coin- cidental machine failure and deliberate sabotage.

Unfortunately, that also meant he was going to have to scout it himself. He had hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. That’s why he had sought out the talkative little mechanic, sprawled in his favorite bar. The right words would have saved him a lot of trouble. “If the Z units go, we’re all out of work. If you look sideways at the W runners, they stop dead… I keep telling them there’s no backup for the four-wheels, but no one listens” Any phrase like that would have given him a target. Instead, he was going to have to do his own dirty work.

Well, he hadn’t really expected the answer to fall into his lap. He had hoped, but he hadn’t really counted on it. That’s why he was wearing his Ninja suit.

He stood up and reached for his employee card, then remembered Handel had already paid for the drinks. Rick was a nice guy. It was a shame he was going to have to put him out of work, along with the rest of Mc. Crae Enterprises.

Hosato paused for a moment after emerging from the bar’s dimness to let his eyes adjust to the light. One of Sasha’s guards was walking past and swept him with an impersonal gaze. Hosato smiled and nodded a greeting, which was ignored.

He wasn’t worried about detection, yet. At the moment, his Ninja suit looked like an ordinary turtleneck jumpsuit with wide turnback cuffs. This was no accident. Part of invisibility was being able to blend with the general populace before and after the job, and the suit was designed to enable him to do precisely that.

Setting his legs for a purposeful stride, he left the mall and living quarters and headed into the tunnels leading to the other buildings of the complex. There were occasional security guards about, but none paid him particular attention.

The boldness of a daytime scouting mission had its advantages. If seen, he would be assumed to be going about normal business. At night, the only ones moving about would be him and the guards, which would immediately arouse suspicions.

As he navigated the tunnels, he debated trying for one of the buildings housing a product family other than Turner’s. It would be better if he practiced his trade in another area to avoid throwing immediate suspicion on himself as a member of Turner’s staff. As quickly as the thought occurred to him, he rejected it. Before he could make his penetration, he first had to traverse the corridors. If he were seen in a building other than where the guards were used to seeing him, the balloon would go up and he’d have a great deal of difficulty explaining his presence. No, it would have to be Turner’s building.

That decision made, he turned up the flight of stairs leading to his chosen target. When he reached the second landing, instead of continuing up to the office levels, he paused in front of a small metal door in the wall marked “Maintenance Access.”

He shot a quick glance up and down the stairs, but for the moment he was alone. Actually, even if he were observed at this point, he was relatively safe. This was a scouting mission only, and as such he had no incriminating equipment or explosives on his person that would betray his true intent if seen or searched.

Working quickly, but with careful precision, he pulled out the winding stem of his wristwatch and swept it over the door and frame. The second hand, now still, showed no new movement.

Apparently the door was what it seemed, a plain metal door with no lock. There were no indications of electric currents to betray a hidden alarm system.

Hosato stared at the door for a moment. The big question was, what was on the other side of the door. A guard. A camera. It was ludicrous to believe an outfit as security-conscious as Mc. Crae would leave this vital passage vulnerable. Well, there was only one way to find out. Fixing an expression of mild curiosity on his face, he opened the door and looked inside.

A low, dimly lit corridor stretched away before him for some thirty feet before terminating in an abrupt right turn. Curious.

He stretched his arm in and swept the floor, walls, and ceiling immediately inside the door with his wrist-watch. Nothing.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped inside and let the door shut behind him. Nothing happened.

He waited impatiently for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was here somewhere. He could feel it instinctively. Somewhere nearby was an alarm waiting to be triggered. The question was, could he find and identify it before it alerted the guards to his presence?

Cautiously he edged forward. He studied the walls, ceiling, and floor for telltale openings or holes, while at the same time he swept the same surfaces with his wristwatch. It was here somewhere.

Ten feet down the corridor, he found it. Unconsciously he nodded to himself with professional admiration and satisfaction. Very neat.

The second hand on his watch jumped, indicating the presence of electrical currents under the 'floor. Probably pressure plates set to trigger an alarm if anyone walked across that portion of the corridor. Short of tearing up the floor, there was no way of deactivating the trap or telling how far down the corridor it extended, so he probably couldn’t jump over it. It was a very effective system, which would catch the average intruder before he detected it, and stop him cold. Fortunately, Hosato didn’t fit into that category.

He scanned the walls with his watch. As he suspected, they were free of alarms.

He sighed inwardly. Well, this was it. Beyond this point he could no longer claim to be lost or curious if caught. There was no way in which someone could casually or accidentally bypass this trap. Penetration beyond this point could only be calculated and deliberate.

Squatting down, he pressed the bottoms of his pants legs against the sides of his boots, taking care to be sure the proper electrical contacts were made. Standing again, he unrolled the turtleneck. It was longer than it appeared, coming up over his head and sealing with the same type of fitting that attached his pants to his boots, leaving him peering out two narrow eye slits in the resulting hood. Finally he folded the wide sleeve cuffs down over his hands and sealed them. As the final connection was made, sealing him in completely, the Ninja suit activated itself. He was ready.